Albert Fert

One of the fathers of spintronics

Albert Fert is a French physicist, 2007 Nobel Laureate in Physics. Today, he his Emeritus Professor and Scientific Director of Laboratoire Albert Fert at Université Paris-Saclay.

His field of research is Nanophysics, the quantum physics of materials at nanoscale. He is well-known as one of the pioneers of the development of Spintronics, a today important field of physics exploiting the spin of the electrons, at the interface between Magnetism and Electronics. Spintronics develops today along many axes, from spin-orbitronics to oxitronics, topological physics of the nanoparticles called skyrmions, neuromorphic and quantum computing, superconducting microwaves devices… Its applications are multiple.

The starting point of spintronic was the experimental demonstration (1965-66) by Fert and Campbell of the importance of the electron spin orientation on the electronic conduction in magnetic materials, as had been suggested by the theoretician and Nobel laureate Nevill Mott. It led to the discovery (1988) of the “Giant Magnetoresistance” of magnetic multilayers (GMR) by the groups of Fert in France and Grunberg in Germany.

The GMR, the very important drop of the electrical resistance of multilayers induced by a magnetic field, had rapidly many applications. In magnetic hard discs, reading by GMR led to a considerable increase in the information capacity of the disks and boosted the development of data centers and information technologies. Other applications, on the market since 2006, are the logic and memory nanocomponents which are called MRAM and are interesting for their low energy consumption.

Today, among the many branches of spintronics, on can cite the very active branch of neuromorphic spintronics based on the use of neuron end synapse nanocomponents in brain-like computing architectures. Examples of other very active fields are the development of microwave devices mixing spin and superconductivity and, also, the physics and applications of the topological nanoparticles called skyrmions. His current interest is for a new type of spintronics called quadritronics.

Path and recognition

Albert Fert was born in Carcassone (France). He obtained degrees in mathematics and physics from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris) and then, in 1970, received a PhD in physics from the Université Paris-Sud, where he became a professor in 1976.

He is currently an emeritus professor at Université Paris-Saclay. In 1995, he cofounded the Unité Mixte de Physique CNRS/Thales (today Albert Fert Laboratory), a joint laboratory of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and Thales Group inside Université Paris-Saclay. He served as scientific director of the laboratory from the very beginning.

Spintronics

2007 Nobel Prize in Physics 

Université Paris-Saclay, DIPC, EHU