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A giant leap for electronics

Giant magnetoresistance

Nature Physics volume 4, pages S16–S17 (2008)Cite this article

Crucial to this technological revolution was an earlier discovery made by the groups of Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg — for which the two won the 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics. In 1988, they had observed a large change in the electrical resistance of thin metal layers as a function of an external magnetic field. Although bulk magnetoresistive effects had been known for more than a century (discovered by William Thomson, later to become Lord Kelvin), they were usually only moderate. However, in the studies led by Fert and Grünberg, the effect was much more pronounced. From the outset, these thin magnetic multilayer structures showed magnetoresistance of up to 50%; the phenomenon was dubbed 'giant' magnetoresistance (GMR).

GMR is based on the spin-dependent scattering of electrons travelling across metallic thin films. In its most basic realization, a GMR device consists of two thin magnetic metal films, separated by a non-magnetic metal. If the magnetic layers have a different magnetic orientation with respect to each other, the electrons scatter strongly in the trilayer structure and the electrical resistance is high. However, once the magnetic orientation of the magnetic layers is aligned using an external magnetic field, electrons with spins antiparallel to that direction scatter much less, and move more easily between the magnetic and non-magnetic layers — hence, the electrical resistance is low.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Senior Editor, Nature Materials,

    Joerg Heber

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  1. Joerg Heber
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Heber, J. A giant leap for electronics. Nature Phys 4 (Suppl 1), S16–S17 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys873

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