Spin-polarized supercurrents for spintronics: A marriage between superconductivity and ferromagnetism is opening the door for new spin-based applications

The past decade has seen dramatic advances in designing and building structures that combine zero-resistance supercurrents of superconductors with the spin alignment of ferromagnets. The resulting spin-polarized supercurrents can propagate over long distances, and as a controllable source of spin states, they hold tantalizing promise for spintronics, an emerging field that exploits electrons’ spin degrees of freedom for electronic devices.