Global Spintronics Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

Global Spintronics Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The Global Spintronics Market (henceforth referred to as the market studied) was valued at USD 591.8 million in 2021, and it is projected to be worth USD 5693.1 million by 2027, registering a CAGR of 39.2% during the period 2022-2027 (henceforth, referred to as the forecast period). The spintronics market is in its nascent stage, in which a significant portion of the market is still highly dependent on research and technological innovations. Moreover, the supply side of the market was affected at the initial phase of COVID-19 due to nationwide lockdown and factory closure across the world. However, the scenario expanded the scope of the market studied as the industries, like data centers and cloud computing, witnessed a massive surge in demand and adoption.

Key Highlights

• The latest advances in spintronics technology are based on nanometric thin film structures, with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, in which the spin currents are utilized for producing changes in the magnetization of a magnetic layer. This effect is called spin-orbit torque (SOT), and it can be improved by engineering multilayer stacks composed of alternated magnetic or non-magnetic metals. These systems are the basic elements used for spin-orbit torque magnetization switching, utilized in the next generation of magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM) devices.
• For instance, the SpinOrbitronics research team guided by Dr. Paolo Perna at IMDEA Nanociencia observed the emergence of an interfacially enabled increase of the spin-orbit torque when an ultrathin Cu interlayer is inserted between Pt and Co in symmetric Pt/Co/Pt trilayer. The improvement of SOT is accompanied by a reduction of the spin-Hall magnetoresistance, showing that the spin memory loss effect in the Cu/Pt and Co/Cu interfaces is responsible for both enhanced SOT and a reduction in the spin-Hall magnetoresistance.
• In recent years, spintronics has been gaining momentum in the microelectronics market with the launch of industrial production from many major players in the field (Samsung, INTEL, TSMC, Global Foundries) of a new type of magnetic memory - MRAMs (Magnetic Random Access Memory). There have been comprehensive experimental efforts to regulate the electron displacement over long distances, although maintaining electron spin coherence after transfer continues to remain a challenge. Since individual electron spins can be displaced coherently over a distance of 5 µm, controlling the spin of electrons for long distances was challenging for the industry. Products integrated with spintronics technology have applications in an electric vehicle, MRAM, industrial motor, data storage, among other end-users discussed within this report's scope.
• In recent years, spintronics technology has also been extensively deployed in data storage devices due to its more active data transmission capabilities and increased storage capacities when compared to conventional storage devices.
• At present, spintronic devices, for instance, magnetic tunnel junctions, suffer from limitations, like low operating temperatures and severe constraints in material selection. To overcome these limitations, the market witnessed new research and development activities by organizations, such as EURAMET. Practically, spintronics technology can consolidate the primary elements of magnetic storage devices and advanced semiconductor microelectronics or nanoelectronics in a single chip.

Key Market TrendsIncreasing Demand for Spintronics in Electronic Devices due to Lesser Power Consumption is Expected to Drive the Market

• It is expected that spintronic-based devices may replace electronic devices and offer greater performance at far low power levels. Electronic devices use electrons' motion for communication and power, whereas spintronic devices use a transferable property of stationary electrons, their spin, or angular momentum. Spintronics reduces the effort required to perform computational or memory functions. Researchers at the University of Tokyo reported that spintronics-based memory devices might offer high speeds at low power. Hence, they develop a new kind of memory based on spintronics that can quickly switch its magnetic state in the presence of an induced current at low power.
• In the last decade, spintronics technology has attracted tremendous attention recently due to its capability to offer a solution for the current problem of increased power dissipation in electronic circuits while scaling down the technology. Spintronic-based structures make it possible with low power consumption, zero standby leakage, infinite endurance, a good read and write performance, nonvolatile nature, and easy 3D integration capability, with the present-day electronic circuits based on CMOS technology. Trends, like IoT and smart devices, has increased the demand for memory components that can handle many functions at low power, hence, expanding the scope of spintronics.
• In the last decade, advancements in the field of fabrication technology have sustained the downscaling of CMOS technology, due to which IC performance has consistently improved following Moore's law. In 2020, Taiwan-based IC foundry, TSMC, manufactured 54 billion MOSFETs for Nvidia's GPU, and back in 2019, it manufactured 39.54 billion MOSFETs for commercially available AMD's Zen2 processor architecture using 7nm process technology. However, further scaling may increase the power dissipation issues, as the transistor size reaches few atomic layers and the quantum effect starts to kicks-in, resulting in quantum tunneling, which may increase leakage current, thus, increasing the standby power dissipation.
• As the global semiconductor industry has been consistently investing in developing future technologies by outlining developments in materials, systems, and devices that can maintain, enhance the storage, and requires low power with increased computational capacity of current ICs, the scope of spintronics is expected to grow. US-based data storage company, Seagate Technology, has done research in spintronic memristor. Spintronics-based transistors may also replace electronics circuit boards with Spintronics ones. Spintronics is one of the emerging fields in nanotechnology and has been growing very rapidly.
• Researchers using the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a United States Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory, are studying methods to manipulate electron spins and developing new materials for spintronics. In September 2020, a research team guided by Chang-Beom Eom, a professor of materials science and engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published a research study in the journal 'Nature Communications' about a new material having three times the storage density, and it uses much less power, compared to other spintronics devices.
• In November 2021, a researcher at the University of Alabama at Birmingham's Department of Physics received a three-year, USD 300,000 grant from the United States Department of Defense Air Force Office of Scientific Research for modeling and predicting the external pressure and strain that induce structural, topological, and magnetic transitions in magnetic topological systems. The success of this research is expected to help in developing next-generation quantum metrology devices for low-energy consumption spintronics devices with topological currents.

North America is Expected to Hold a Major Market Share

• North America is one of the major investors and adopters of the studied market due to the high level of research done by the regional companies in the spintronics market and the increasing adoption of the technologies among the regional end-user industries. Most of the major end-user industries of the spintronics market are highly advancing in the region, enabling the studied market vendors to expand significantly over the forecast period. For instance, industries like electric automotive and transportation, data centers, enterprise storage, server RAID, Industrial automation and IoT, and telecom infrastructure, among others, are significantly booming in the region, which is also fueling the need and demand for advanced technologies like spintronics.
• Furthermore, most market vendors in the global market are US-based, which provides the region a massive competitive advantage and keeps it at the forefront of the studied market's innovation. Massive technology companies like IBM and Intel are playing a significant role in globally commercializing spintronics technology. For instance, in January 2021, researchers at the United States Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University demonstrated the ability to control spin dynamics in magnetic materials by altering their thickness. A new study published in Nature Materials could lead to smaller and more energy-efficient electronic devices, representing a major advancement in spintronics.
• Also, many of the United States' research and innovation organizations are significantly investing in spintronics development, which is also attracting many vendors across the globe. For instance, in 2020, the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its partners in the United States Nanoelectronic Computing Research (nCORE) consortium invested USD 10.3 million throughout four years for establishing a spintronics research center in Minnesota. The Center for Spintronic Materials in Advanced Information Technologies (SMART) planned to include researchers from the Pennsylvania State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgetown University, and the University of Maryland.
• Electric vehicle use in the country has risen rapidly, with an estimated 1% of automotive sales in the United States market coming from electric vehicles, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). ​A notable increase in the demand for electric vehicles has been observed in North America, owing to energy and environmental concerns, accelerating the market for spintronicsintegrated into electric vehicles. The zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program, undertaken in California, is also driving the demand for EVs by requiring automakers to sell a specific percentage of cars powered by electricity, thus fueling the market studied in the country. In January 2021, the United States government announced its plan to replace its entire fleet of 645,000 cars and trucks with US-made electric vehicles and signed a "Buy America" executive order that creates new guidelines for the government's USD 600 billion in annual spending on goods and services. It is expected to boost the total number of EVs by at least 40% above the 1.6 million (including government- and privately-owned) currently on United States streets.
• Moreover, in the United States, a wealth of private-sector companies, academic institutions, and federal research-and-development laboratories are focused explicitly on advancing nanotechnology and MEMS. The Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the United States, founded by a USD 50 million contract with the United States Army Research Office, is a research center in Cambridge especially aimed to develop nanotechnology to improve the survivability of soldiers.

Competitive Landscape

This Global Spintronics Market is characterized by steadily growing levels of product penetration, low product differentiation, and high levels of competition. Competitive advantage is heavily dependent on innovation. Some of the prominent market players, such as Spin Transfer Technologies and Crocus Technologies, received funding to enhance their product innovation in recent years. Thus, the intensity of competitive rivalry is high.

• August 2021 - Crocus Technology Inc. announced the launch of CT430 and CT431 isolated current sensors with 1MHz bandwidth and <1% total error over the full temperature range. The accurate and high-speed operation output allows customers to optimize the system design for higher efficiency and smaller size.
• May 2021 - Avalanche Technology announced the availability of new space-grade parallel asynchronous x16-interface high-reliability P-SRAM (Persistent SRAM) memory devices based on its latest Spin Transfer Torque Magneto-resistive RAM (STT-MRAM) technology. These new products require 1/12th of the board space required by Toggle-MRAM-based products for aerospace applications, and they consume 1/4th of the power consumed by Toggle MRAM during reading operations.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
• 3 months of analyst support

Companies

NVE Corporation
Everspin Technologies Inc.
Spin Memory Inc.
Crocus Technology
Synopsys (QuantumWise)
Avalanche Technology