spinselective

Spinselective describes processes, interactions, materials or devices that preferentially affect particles, carriers or states of one spin orientation over the other. The term is used across condensed-matter physics, spintronics, molecular electronics and certain areas of chemistry and biology to denote selection, filtering, transfer or detection that depends on electron or particle spin.

Mechanisms that produce spinselectivity include external magnetic fields, internal exchange interactions, spin–orbit coupling, magnetic ordering, and structural or chiral asymmetry in materials. Examples of spinselective phenomena are spin filtering in magnetic tunnel junctions and spin valves, spin-polarized transport in semiconductor heterostructures, spin-dependent scattering in metals and interfaces, and spinselective optical pumping used to prepare polarized spin ensembles.

A prominent research topic is the chiral-induced spin selectivity (CISS) effect, in which chiral molecules and assemblies appear to preferentially transmit electrons with one spin orientation. CISS has been reported in molecular junctions, surfaces and biological systems, and remains an active area of experimental and theoretical investigation because its microscopic origins are not yet fully settled.

Spinselective processes underpin many technological goals such as nonvolatile memory, spin-based logic, quantum information hardware and spin-sensitive sensors. Experimental probes include spin-resolved photoemission, magnetotransport measurements, spin-polarized scanning probe techniques, electron spin resonance and magneto-optical methods. Understanding and controlling spinselectivity is central to developing devices that exploit spin as an information carrier.