Towards spintronics materials for energy saving

The development of smart, nano-scale, low-power-consumption spintronic-based devices has been made possible through recent advances in modern fabrication and characterization nanomagnetism technologies. Dimensionality and interfacial effects promote much of the new properties observed in complex multi-layered nanostructures. The development of polarization-dependent X-ray based techniques has contributed essentially to our present level of fundamental understanding of artificial nanostructures that exhibit unexpected collective phenomena. In this contribution, some of the recent developments in spintronic as well as in advanced synchrotron-based instrumentation will be reviewed. Future trends focused on both experimental improvements and new scientific issues are discussed.