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Dr. Stuart S.P. Parkin is an experimental physicist at IBM’s Almaden
Research Center in San Jose, California. His discoveries into the behavior
of thin-film magnetic structures were critical in enabling recent
increases in the data density and capacity of computer hard-disk drives.
Parkin also made key discoveries that led to IBM's pioneering use of the
giant magnetoresistive (GMR) effect to read disk-drive data bits that were
far smaller than could have been previously detected. He was the first to
use sputtering techniques to create GMR structures, which consist of thin
magnetic layers separated by non-magnetic metals. The electrical
resistance parallel to the planes of such structures can change
dramatically according to whether the magnetizations of consecutive
magnetic layers are in the same or opposite directions (parallel or
anti-parallel alignment, respectively).
In 1991, he discovered that slight changes in the thickness of the
non-magnetic spacer layer caused large oscillations between parallel and
anti-parallel magnetic alignment. And in 1994, Parkin and his IBM Research
colleagues used this basic information to design and create GMR elements
for what proved to be the most sensitive disk-drive read/write head made
at that time. Subsequently, IBM introduced the GMR head in its disk-drive
products in 1997. It is now used in all of the world's total production of
disk drives. The GMR head has been a key enabler of the more than 30-fold
increase in disk-drive data densities from 1997 to present (2.4 to more
than 70 gigabits per square inch).
Parkin is currently studying magnetic tunnel junctions -- which require
just a few atomic layers of an electrical insulator between magnetic
layers to create large resistance changes perpendicular to the layers'
planes -- and their use in both disk-drive recording heads more sensitive
than GMR heads, and a new type of solid-state non-volatile magnetic random
access memory (MRAM). Tunnel-junction heads may enable data-storage
densities beyond 100 billion bits per square inch. Magnetic RAM chips
could lead to instant-on computers with much better performance,
energy-efficiency and battery life because they could combine the best
attributes of the three major memories in use today: the data density (and
thus low cost) of DRAM, the speed of SRAM, and the non-volatility of Flash
memory. In 2001, IBM began an MRAM development program with Infineon based
at IBM's Advanced Semiconductor Technology Center in East Fishkill, N.Y.
In May 1991, Parkin was awarded the Materials Research Society's Inaugural
Outstanding Young Investigator Award and the Charles Vernon Boys Prize of
the Institute of Physics (U.K.). In 1999, he was awarded the American
Institute of Physics (AIP) Prize for Industrial Application of Physics.
Dr. Parkin shared both the American Physical Society's International New
Materials Prize (1994) and the European Physical Society's Hewlett-Packard
Europhysics Prize (1997) with Albert Fert of University of Paris-Sud in
Orsay, France, and Peter Grunberg of KFA Julich in Germany. Dr. Parkin is
a Fellow of the American Physical Society. In 1997, he was elected to
IBM's Academy of Technology and named one of IBM's Master Inventors. In
1999 he was named an IBM Fellow -- IBM's highest technical honor -- and in
May 2000 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London). R&D
Magazine named Dr. Parkin "Innovator of the Year" in 2001. Since
1997, he has served as a Consulting Professor in Applied Physics at
Stanford University.
A native of Watford, England, Dr. Parkin received his B.A. (1977) and was
elected a Research Fellow (1979) at Trinity College in Cambridge, England,
and was awarded his Ph.D (1980) at the Cavendish Laboratory, also in
Cambridge. He joined IBM in 1982 as a World Trade Post-doctoral Fellow,
becoming a permanent member of the staff the following year.
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