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SAN JOSE and STANFORD, Calif. (April 26, 2004) -- IBM and Stanford University are joining forces on the advanced research and creation of new high-performance, low-power electronics in the emerging field of nanotechnology called "spintronics." To formalize the effort, scientists at IBM's Almaden Research Center and Stanford University today announced the formation of the IBM-Stanford Spintronic Science and Applications Center (SpinAps, for short).
"SpinAps researchers will work to create breakthroughs that could revolutionize the electronics industry, just as the transistor did 50 years ago," said Robert Morris, Almaden Lab Director.
Since its inception, the microelectronics industry has progressed by shrinking circuitry. This approach is becoming much more difficult, time-consuming and expensive, and there is now a worldwide search for new ideas that can deliver improved performance in smaller sizes than is possible with conventional designs. Spintronics is an exciting possibility because controlling the spin -- or magnetic orientation -- of electrons within tiny structures made of ultra-thin layers can produce such advantageous properties as low-power switching and nonvolatile information storage.
"The SpinAps scientists will dramatically hasten progress from theoretical concept to experimental verification and from new-device ideas to product prototypes," said Stanford Dean of Engineering James D. Plummer.
About Spintronics
Electron spin is a quantum property that has two possible states, either "up" or "down." Aligning spins in a material creates magnetism. Moreover, magnetic fields affect the passage of "up" and "down" electrons differently. Understanding and controlling this property is central to creating a whole new breed of electronic properties.
In fact, the promise of this technology was demonstrated earlier by IBM. The first mass-produced spintronic device has already revolutionized the hard-disk drive industry. Introduced in 1997, the giant magnetoresistive (GMR) head developed at the IBM Almaden lab, is a super-sensitive magnetic-field sensor that enabled a 40-fold increase in data density over the past seven years. Another multilayered spintronic structure is at the heart of the high-speed, nonvolatile magnetic random access memory (MRAM), currently being developed by an IBM-Infineon collaboration and several other companies.
SpinAps scientists envision creating new materials and devices with entirely new capabilities -- such as reconfigurable logic devices, room-temperature superconductors and quantum computers -- that would create dramatically new computational paradigms. Commercial products from SpinAps research are not expected for at least five years.
SpinAps scientists
SpinAps will be directed by IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and Stanford professors Dr. James S. Harris (Electrical Engineering, Applied Physics and Materials Science) and Dr. Shoucheng Zhang (Physics and Applied Physics). These individuals bring to the Center very different, yet complementary, backgrounds, expertise and perspectives.
Parkin is a pioneer in the science and application of spintronic materials. His discovery of oscillatory interlayer coupling in magnetic multilayers led to IBM's development of the GMR head. He also proposed using spintronic magnetic tunnel junction elements in MRAM. Parkin’s group has unique capabilities for rapidly preparing a wide variety of magnetic thin-film materials.
Harris is an expert in developing new and artificially structured materials by molecular beam epitaxy and applying them in useful electronic devices. His lab has several machines for making semiconducting materials with exquisite precision. He will focus on creating ultra-thin multilayered semiconducting building blocks for new spin-based devices.
Zhang is a theoretician who has made a number of contributions to understanding superconducting, magnetic and correlated electron phenomena in solids. For example, while Ohm's Law describes the inevitable dissipation of power as charge currents flow, a recent generalized theory by Zhang and colleagues predicts that generating a spin current by an electric field can be reversible and non-dissipative. SpinAps Center researchers will attempt to demonstrate this exciting possibility.
Research at the SpinAps Center will involve about a half-dozen Stanford professors, a similar number of IBM scientists, up to 10 graduate students working at both IBM Almaden and Stanford, three or more postdoctoral researchers and two or more visiting faculty. Initial funding for the Center is from IBM and Stanford. Participating scientists' research projects are also funded by agencies such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation. The center will begin operation immediately.
SpinAps is a new example of IBM's long-standing tradition as a technology leader of partnering with world-class universities to increase the depth and accelerate the practical applications of academic research while providing invaluable opportunities and experiences for university scientists and students.
Related links:
Almaden SpinAps
GMR head
"Era of GMR Heads" (Impact of GMR heads on HDD industry)
Magnetic RAM
MRAM images
Spin transistors
Ohm's Law for spintronics (by Stanford Prof. Shoucheng Zhang)
Stanford's Center for Integrated Systems
SpinAps People:
Director Stuart Parkin
Co-Director James Harris
Co-Director Shoucheng Zhang
Wikipedia's history of "spin"
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21st century spinning wheel: Harnessing the power of electron spin -- the quantum property that is responsible for magnetism -- is the goal of IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin and SpinAps, the new IBM-Stanford research center announced today. Central to their research is a new six-chamber, $5 million high-vacuum apparatus within which scientists can mix and match three nanotech materials manufacturing techniques and analyze the results. Built around a central wheel-shaped robot, this device will enable scientists to make and test unique materials much more rapidly than had been possible before.
Watch the animation on Spin Transistors
21st century spinning wheel: Harnessing the power of electron spin -- the quantum property that is responsible for magnetism -- is the goal of IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin (left), Stanford student Roger Wang and the new IBM-Stanford research center known as SpinAps. Central to their research is a new six-chamber, $5 million high-vacuum apparatus within which scientists can mix and match three nanotech materials manufacturing techniques and analyze the results. Built around a central wheel-shaped robot, this device will enable scientists to make and test unique materials much more rapidly than had been possible before.
Grand Central Station for IBM's new spintronic research: Harnessing the power of electron spin -- the quantum property that is responsible for magnetism -- is the goal of IBM Fellow Stuart Parkin (left), Stanford student Roger Wang and the new IBM-Stanford research center known as SpinAps. Central to their research is a new six-chamber, $5 million high-vacuum apparatus within which scientists can mix and match three nanotech materials manufacturing techniques and analyze the results. Built around a central wheel-shaped robot, this device will enable scientists to make and test unique materials much more rapidly than had been possible before.
History:
The concept of electron spin was created and developed in the mid-1920s by Wolfgang Pauli and a number of European physicists. The late 1980s discoveries of the giant magnetoresistive (GMR) effect and oscillatory coupling in magnetic multilayers -- as well as the ability to make ultra-thin layers with precise control -- led to commercial products.
The first widely used spintronic device -- the GMR spin-valve head was an extraordinarily sensitive magnetic field sensor. Pioneered by IBM in 1997, the GMR head enabled hard-disk drives to read smaller data bits, which led to a more than 40-fold increase in data-storage density over the past seven years.
Spintronic structures originally proposed by IBM are also at the heart of Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM), a fast non-volatile memory concept currently being developed by IBM, Infineon and others.
SpinAps research will focus on new generations of spintronic materials and devices, such as spin transistors, which could enable new types of reconfigurable logic circuits, and structures that manipulate spin currents.
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