Aug 3 2007
Japan’s largest materials research institute presented its inaugural award for breakthroughs in materials science and technology to the director of The University of Alabama’s MINT center.
The National Institute for Materials Science honored Dr. William Butler, director of UA’s Center for Materials for Information Technology, or MINT, with the NIMS Award for Recent Breakthroughs in Materials Science and Technology at its annual conference in Tsukuba, Japan held July 11-13.
Most, if not all, of the newest computer hard drives that are market bound benefit from developments first sparked by Butler and his colleagues’ theoretical calculations. These new hard drives are better, smaller and less expensive to produce than their predecessors.
In papers published in 2001 and 2004, Butler, a theoretical physicist, and his colleagues developed a new way of thinking about how electrons travel through a very thin insulating material separating two magnetic metal electrodes. The work, completed in conjunction with Xiaoguang Zhang and Thomas Schulthess at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and James MacLaren at Tulane University, showed how to choose the right materials and use them in the right way to make an extremely tiny device that can detect a very weak magnetic field.
Their papers shifted the industry researchers’ focus to a different avenue, which has now made its way from the laboratory to the users’ desktops.
The development is being hailed as representative of a new pattern in materials science, one by which theoretical research can play a leading role in discovering new materials with new capabilities.
These theoretical calculations, in combination with other developments, have also led to a huge investment in a new type of computer memory called “spin-torque MRAM.” If this type of memory becomes a reality, computer users would not face a boot-up process each time they turn on their computers, greatly reducing electricity needs for desktops and increasing batter life for portable computing devices, such as laptops.
This new memory is what’s known as non-volatile memory, meaning it doesn’t have to be constantly refreshed and would ‘remember’ the state it was in even during electricity interruptions.
Since 2001 Butler has directed MINT, deemed by the National Science Foundation as one of the 29 Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers in the United States. MINT has continuously carried this designation since it first achieved it in 1994 as one of the 11 centers so recognized in the agency’s original selection.
In its 15-year history at UA, MINT has won three Materials Research Science and Engineering awards from NSF. The latest funding, awarded in 2002, was for $6 million to be distributed annually through 2008. The MINT Center is internationally recognized as one of the world’s premier centers for research on materials for magnetic information storage and the new field of spin-electronics.
The University of Alabama, a student-centered research university, is in the midst of planned, steady enrollment growth with a goal of reaching 28,000 students by 2010. This growth, which is positively impacting the campus and the state's economy, is in keeping with UA's vision to be the university of choice for the best and brightest students. UA, the state's flagship university, is an academic community united in its commitment to enhancing the quality of life for all Alabamians.