Smart living is a trending and connected lifestyle that envisions efficient and sustainable energy utilization, stable and reliable power supply, intelligent and coordinated transportation and mobility, and personalized and cost-effective healthcare. Its realization needs the Internet of Things (IoT). IoT is a compelling platform connecting trillions of sensors and collecting data for connectivity and analytics. It is more advanced than traditional monitoring systems where limited sensors and wired communication can merely collect fragmented data in the application domains. Spintronic sensors with the superb measuring ability and multiple unique advantages can be one of the critical sensing devices supporting the IoT and enabling smart living. In this paper, we review successful applications of individual spintronic sensors in electrical current sensing, transmission and distribution lines monitoring, vehicle detection, and biodetection that can help to fulfill the promises of smart living in energy management, power delivery, transport, and healthcare. The wireless spintronic sensor networks (WSSNs) working at the massive interconnected network level are proposed and illustrated to provide pervasive monitoring systems, which facilitate the intelligent surveillance and management over building, power grid, transport, and healthcare. The database of collected information will be of great use to policy making in public services and city planning. This paper provides insights for realizing smart living through the integration of IoT with spintronic sensor technology.

Memristors with nonvolatile storage performance and simulated synaptic functions are regarded as one of the critical devices to overcome the bottleneck in traditional von Neumann computer architecture. 2D van der Waals heterostructures have paved a new way for the development of advanced memristors by integrating the intriguing features of different materials and offering additional controllability over their optoelectronic properties. Herein, planar memristors with both electrical and optical tunability based on ReS₂/WS₂ van der Waals heterostructure are demonstrated. The devices show unique unipolar nonvolatile behavior with high R_off/R_on ratio of up to 10⁶, desirable endurance, and retention, which are superior to pure ReS₂ and WS₂ devices. When decreasing the channel length, the set voltage can be notably reduced while the high R_off/R_on ratios are retained. By introducing electrostatic doping through the gate control, the set voltage can be tailored in a wide range from 4.50 to 0.40 V. Furthermore, biological synaptic functions and plasticity, including spike rate‐dependent plasticity and paired‐pulse facilitation, are successfully realized. By employing optical illumination, resistive switching can also be modulated, which is dependent on the illumination energy and power. A mechanism related to the interlayer charge transfer controlled by optical excitation is revealed.

An optical characterization method with high spectral resolution for broadband, multilayer dielectric gratings working at the −1st reflection order is demonstrated in this paper. The diffraction-efficiency measurement setup for the broadband gratings with high efficiencies mainly consists of a double-light-path system with a monochromator as the illumination source and an automatic rotation stage for incident and diffraction angles adjustment. Two typical practical difficulties, namely (1) the mismatch between the spot size of diffracted light and the limited detector aperture and (2) the shared propagation path between the incident and diffracted light at the Littrow angle, were well solved. A fabricated multilayer dielectric grating was measured on the established measurement setup. Diffraction efficiencies greater than 90% in the wavelength range from 763 to 852 nm were obtained with an average relative deviation less than 1.0%. At the moment, the wavelength resolution is 1 nm and the angle resolution is 0.2 deg. The high-resolution broadband diffraction spectrometry testing method is applicable to characterizing broadband pulse compression gratings in the laser systems.