A STUMPY metal column less than one-fifth of a micrometre tall claimed the record this week as the world’s smallest microwave generator. It has also solved a long-standing mystery about how spinning electrons interact with magnetic fields – a key phenomenon in the emerging technology of “spintronics”.
One way to think of an electron is as a tiny ball spinning about an axis. Because it is charged, it generates a tiny magnetic field as it spins and this can be made to line up with an external field. It is this property of spin that a team led by Daniel Ralph…
