Context: Recently, Indian scientists have produced electron gas with ultra-high mobility, which can speed up transfer of quantum information and signal and increase data storage and memory.

• An ultra-high mobility 2D-Electron Gas (2DEG) has been produced at the interface of two insulating oxide layers.

Key Findings

• As the property of an electron called spin degree of freedom along with its charge has been manipulated. It has given rise to an altogether new field of spin-electronics or ‘spintronics’.
• A phenomenon called the ‘Rashba effect’ might play a key role in Spintronic devices.
• Rashba effect refers to splitting of spin-bands in an electronic system.
• The strong spin-orbit coupling and relativistic nature of the electrons in the 2DEG resulted in the ‘Rashba field’.
• Spintronic devices: devices that use the properties of electrons to transmit, process and store information.
• They use fundamental property known as spin (intrinsic angular momentum of the electron).
• Scientists have produced an ultra-high mobility 2D-Electron Gas (2DEG) at the interface of two insulating oxide layers.

Advantages

• They can easily remember and transfer its memory for a long time and distance because electrons do not collide inside the medium for a long distance.
• They don’t dissipate energy as heat as of very low resistance they produce by less colliding properties.
• They do not heat up easily and need less input energy to operate.

Applications

• Open up a new field of device physics, especially in the field of quantum technology.
• Applicable for next-generation data storage media and quantum computers.

Key Facts

• A two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) is an electron gas that is free to move in two dimensions, but tightly confined in the third.
• This tight confinement leads to quantized energy levels for motion in the third direction.