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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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