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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 today’s digital world. Spintronics has 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 novel, non-volatile memory in which data is encoded in mobile chiral domain walls that are moved at high speeds by current induced spin-orbit torques to and thro along synthetic antiferromagnetic racetracks. Chiral domain walls are just one member of an ever-expanding family of nano-scopic chiral spin textures that are of great interest from both a fundamental as well as a technological perspective. A zoology of complex spin textures have been discovered including, in our own work, anti-skyrmions, elliptical Bloch skyrmions, two-dimensional Néel skyrmions, and fractional anti-skyrmions. Such nanoscopic chiral spin textures could be use on the Racetrack. In this regard, recent discoveries in superconducting spintronics have great potential for low energy-consuming cryogenic racetrack memories that are needed for advanced quantum computing systems. In this talk I will discuss some of these recent developments in chiral spintronic phenomena and devices, focusing on our own contributions. About the spearker: Stuart Parkin is Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle, Germany, and an Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg. His research interests include spintronic materials and devices for advanced sensor, memory, and logic applications, oxide thin-film heterostructures, topological metals, exotic superconductors, and cognitive devices. Parkin’s discoveries in spintronics enabled a more than 10,000-fold increase in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives. For his work that thereby enabled the “big data” world of today, Parkin was awarded the Millennium Technology Award from the Technology Academy Finland in 2014 and, most recently, the King Faisal Prize for Science 2021 for his research into three distinct classes of spintronic memories. Parkin is an elected Fellow or Member: Royal Society (London), Royal Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, German National Academy of Science - Leopoldina, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Indian Academy of Sciences, and TWAS - academy of sciences for the developing world. Parkin has received numerous awards including the American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (1994); Europhysics Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Solid State Physics (1997); 2009 IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Neel Medal; 2012 von Hippel Award - Materials Research Society; 2013 Swan Medal - Institute of Physics (London); Alexander von Humboldt Professorship − International Award for Research (2014); Millennium Technology Award (2014); ERC Advanced Grant - SORBET (2015); King Faisal Prize for Science 2021; ERC Advanced Grant – SUPERMINT (2022). Parkin has received 4 honorary doctorates. Parkin has published >677 papers, has >125 issued patents, and has given >836 invited talks around the world. Parkin was named a “Highly Cited Researcher” by Clarivate for the years 2018-2023 and has an h-index of 130. Clarivate recently named Parkin as a “Citation Laureate 2023”. |
