[NEIU Physics Students] 2007 Nobel Prize in Physics

[Anderson, Gregory]

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2007 jointly to

Albert Fert
Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/THALES, Université Paris-Sud, Orsay, France,

and

Peter Grünberg
Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany,

"for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance".
 
Nanotechnology gives sensitive read-out heads for compact hard disks

This year's physics prize is awarded for the technology that is used to read data on hard disks. It is thanks to this technology that it has been possible to miniaturize hard disks so radically in recent years. Sensitive read-out heads are needed to be able to read data from the compact hard disks used in laptops and some music players, for instance.

In 1988 the Frenchman Albert Fert and the German Peter Grünberg each independently discovered a totally new physical effect – Giant Magnetoresistance or GMR. Very weak magnetic changes give rise to major differences in electrical resistance in a GMR system. A system of this kind is the perfect tool for reading data from hard disks when information registered magnetically has to be converted to electric current. Soon researchers and engineers began work to enable use of the effect in read-out heads. In 1997 the first read-out head based on the GMR effect was launched and this soon became the standard technology. Even the most recent read-out techniques of today are further developments of GMR.

For more information please consult http://nobelprize.org/
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