MvL-Kolloquium: Prof. Dr. Stuart Parkin

Spintronics is a field of research that harnesses the electron’s spin to create novel materials with exotic properties and devices especially those for storing digital data that is the lifeblood of many of the most valuable companies today. Spintronics has already had two major technological successes with the invention and application of spin-valve magnetic field sensors that allowed for more than a thousand-fold increase in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives that store ~70% of all digital data today. Just recently, after almost a 25-year exploration and development period, a high performance nonvolatile Magnetic Random Access Memory, that uses magnetic tunnel junction memory elements, became commercially available. A novel spintronics memory-storage technology, Magnetic Racetrack Memory is on track to become the third major success of spintronics. Racetrack Memory is a non-volatile memory in which data is encoded in mobile chiral domain walls that are moved at high speeds by spin currents to and thro along synthetic antiferromagnetic racetracks. In this colloquium I will introduce the basic physics and especially the novel atomically-engineered materials that make possible these three spintronic technologies.