SPINTEC

Positioned at the crossroad of science and technology, SPINTEC (SPINtronique et TEchnologie des Composants) is one of the leading spintronics research laboratories worldwide. Ideally located on the MINATEC campus in Grenoble, SPINTEC gathers physicists and engineers from the academic and the industrial world. It was created in 2002 and rapidly expanded to reach 100 persons including 38 permanent staff and about 40 Ph.D. students, post-docs and international visitors. It is affiliated with CEA, CNRS and Univ. Grenoble Alpes. SPINTEC aims to bridge fundamental research and innovative technology in the emerging field of spin electronics. The international technology roadmap for semiconductors (ITRS) reckons a major role of spintronic devices in tomorrow’s semiconductor chips, with the potential to totally displace the stand alone (e.g. DRAM) and embedded memory market. Other fast-developing fields include magnetic field sensors and bio-applications. It is critical to be at the forefront of research, to generate a strong IP position and to establish the proper partnerships for technology transfer. SPINTEC's unique positioning brings together top-level scientists and engineers working in close collaboration to ensure that new paradigms can be swiftly translated into technology proof of concepts and functional devices. As such, the outcome of the laboratory is not only scientific publications, but also a coherent patents portfolio and implementation of relevant demonstrators. Whereas the fundamental research is mostly operated through collaborative funded projects with other research laboratories, the applied research is often carried out in partnership with private actors including Applied Materials, ST Microelectronics, Thales, Samsung, Seagate, …), SME’s (SNR, Singulus,…) or start-ups (Crocus, Menta, Spin Transfer Technologies,…). SPINTEC has spun-off several start-up companies: Crocus Technology in 2006, eVaderis in 2014, and HProbe and Antaïos in 2017.