The term was coined in analogy to
spintronics. While in spintronics the internal degree of freedom of
spin is harnessed to store, manipulate and read out bits of information, the proposal for valleytronics is to perform similar tasks using the multiple extrema of the band structure, so that the information of 0s and 1s would be stored as different discrete values of the
crystal momentum. Valleytronics may refer to other forms of quantum manipulation of valleys in semiconductors, including
quantum computation with valley-based
qubits, valley blockade and other forms of
quantum electronics. First experimental evidence of valley blockade predicted in Ref. (which completes the set of
Coulomb charge blockade and Pauli spin blockade) has been observed in a single atom doped silicon transistor. Several theoretical proposals and experiments were performed in a variety of systems, such as
graphene, few-layer
phosphorene, some
transition metal dichalcogenide monolayers,
diamond,
bismuth,
silicon,
carbon nanotubes, and
silicene. == References ==