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Bernard DIENY received the 2019 IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award


Bernard Dieny, researcher at the Irig institute, received the 2019 IEEE Carrier Achievement Award for contributions to spintronics applications including spin-valves and MRAMs and for strengthening the relationship between magnetics and microelectronics communities. The Award was handed out at the MMM/Intermag conference in Washington in January 2019. 

Published on 22 February 2019
Bernard Dieny has been conducting research in magnetism and spin electronics for 35 years. He played a key role in the pioneer work on giant magnetoresistance spin-valves which were introduced in hard disk drives in 1998 [1]. He received an outstanding achievement award from IBM for this work in 2002.

In 2002, he has been involved in the discovery of the perpendicular anisotropy at magnetic metal/oxide interfaces which is nowadays used in pSTT-MRAM to reduce the ratio between switching energy and thermal stability [4-6]. This work has recently been summarized in a Review of Modern Physics article [5].

He introduced several innovative concepts of spintronics devices [2, 3, 7 and 11], including the spin-valve transistor [2], several designs of MRAM cells (thermally assisted MRAM, precessional MRAM, double MTJ MRAM [3, 6], and of spin transfer oscillators (e.g. perpendicular polarizer and in-plane free layer).

More recently, he launched a new activity in his group oriented towards applications of nanomagnetism in biotechnology and biomedicine, in particular a new approach of cancer treatment based on the mechanical vibrations of magnetic nanoparticles. [12]

In 2001, he was co-founder of SPINTEC laboratory (Spintronics and Technology of components) in Grenoble, which now counts about 90 members. He cofounded two startup companies: Crocus Technology on MRAM and magnetic sensors in 2006 and EVADERIS on CMOS/magnetic circuits design in 2014.

He received two Advanced Research grants from the European Research Council in 2009 and 2014 related to hybrid CMOS/Magnetic Integrated Electronics. He was made IEEE Fellow in 2010 and received the De Magny Prize from French Academy of Sciences in 2015 (Awarded once every 2 years for work recognized as outstanding by the Academy).

Bernard Dieny’s and collaborators work on spin-valves had a clear impact in hard disk drives industry and their work on the perpendicular anisotropy at magnetic metal/oxide interfaces now have an impact in microelectronics industry considering that Samsung and TSMC have announced volume production of perpendicular embedded MRAM (YJ Song et al, (Samsung), DOI: 10.1109/ IEDM.2016.7838491; (Samsung Electronics); (Fonderies mondiales); (TSMC)).
Overall, Bernard Dieny published more than 430 peer-reviewed papers cited ~13000 times and filed to date 70 granted patents.

The IEEE Magnetics Society Achievement Award is given every year to a Magnetics Society member who has made extraordinary contributions to the field of magnetics, both though his/her technical achievements and through his/her service to the Magnetics Society. It is the highest honor bestowed by the Magnetics Society.

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