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euros 1m for Briton whose research led to data revolution: Physicist takes prize for work on disk storage: 1,000-fold rise in digital capacity has fed web boom(Guardian (UK) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) British scientist Prof Stuart Parkin has won the 2014 Millennium technology prize worth euros 1m (pounds 824,400) for research that has led to a phenomenal increase in the storage capacity of digital devices and heralded the era of cloud computing. The Watford-born physicist told the Guardian he planned to use the money to buy a house in Halle, Germany. "I will celebrate the award by inviting my fiancee to the Vendome restaurant in Schloss Bensberg, one of our favourite restaurants in Germany," he said. The physicist joins past winners including the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Linux creator Linus Torvalds, and the pioneer of dye-sensitised solar cells, Michael Gratzel. Launched in 2004 and presented every two years, the Millennium technology prize is awarded by Technology Academy Finland, backed by the Finnish state. This year's ceremony takes place in Helsinki on 7 May. "It's fantastic," said Parkin. "It's a great prize. Wonderful scientists and technologists won it before, so of course I am greatly honoured to have been chosen." An IBM Fellow based at the Almaden Research Centre in California, Parkin was selected as winner for his "pioneering contribution to the science and application of spintronic materials, his work leading to a prodigious growth in the capacity to store digital information", the committee said. Parkin's major achievement was the application of a phenomenon known as giant magnetoresistance (GMR) to create extremely sensitive devices that can detect tiny magnetic fields. This is of great importance in magnetic disk drives where information is stored as zeros or ones represented by regions of the disk magnetised differently. The more sensitive the detector is, the smaller the magnetic regions need to be to store the information. This means more data can be packed on to a hard disk drive. Parkin said: "What this little sensing device enabled was a 1,000-fold improvement in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives without changing their cost." GMR was independently discovered by physicists Albert Fert and Peter Grunberg in the late 1980s; they shared the Nobel prize for physics for their work in 2007. The phenomenon arises when atomically thin layers of magnetic and non-magnetic materials are stacked. In a simple arrangement, a non-magnetic layer (typically copper) is sandwiched between two magnetic layers. These magnetic layers behave like bar magnets pointing either north or south. When a current is induced in this sandwich, electrons move through the layers. The degree of hindrance they experience is different depending upon an intrinsic property of them called spin. This spin can be aligned to the direction of the bar magnet or against it. Electrons with a spin in one direction will move more freely, so the flow of the current can be controlled by the relative arrangement of the bar magnets of the top and bottom layers. Parkin's achievement was to develop a device based on such "spintronic" effects in which tiny magnetic fields from magnetised regions in the disk drive can rotate the direction of magnetisation in one of the layers of the sandwich. The result is a sensor that experiences large changes in resistance as it reads the disk drive. In contrast to the expensive and difficult techniques used by Fert and Grunberg to create the layers, Parkin made use of a simpler technique known as sputtering. "I showed that you didn't need these very exotic techniques but one could [use] a much simpler technique which was compatible with mass manufacturing," he said. Parkin also showed that GMR is more common than initially thought, and can be seen at room temperature. The spin-valve read head was commercialised by IBM in 1997, but Parkin went on to develop the technology further in the form of magnetic tunnelling magnetoresistance - a closely related approach that is even more sensitive to tiny magnetic fields and is now replacing spin valves. The boom in storage capacity has facilitated the rise of numerous internet-based services, from Twitter to iPlayer, that make use of cloud storage based on magnetic disk drives. Parkin is keen to see nanotechnology yield further innovations. "I think atomic layer engineering will enable us to create interesting new technologies in the future - not only for storing data but for computing and manipulating data," he said. "One of my main interests is in trying to build what I would call cognitive devices, devices that we could use for memory or logic that in some sense are inspired by how we compute in our own brain." Captions: Prof Stuart Parkin said he was honoured to win the Millennium technology prize (c) 2014 Guardian Newspapers Limited. |