Prof. Geoffrey Stephen Beach

Toyota Professor in Materials Processing
Co-Director, Materials Research Laboratory (MRL)

Primary DLC

Department of Materials Science and Engineering

MIT Room: 13-2042

Assistant

Sarah Ciriello
sciri@mit.edu

Areas of Interest and Expertise

Nanotechnology
Thin Films

Research Summary

Professor Geoffrey Beach’s research focuses on spin dynamics and “spin-electronics”—the study of new materials whose magnetic properties could be changed electrically—in nanoscale magnetic materials and devices. Developing ways to store information more densely and access it more quickly requires understanding the magnetization configurations in nanoscale structures and how they evolve. A major thrust of Professor Beach’s research aims to harness the spin of the electron in magnetic materials to realize new approaches to spin-based storage and computation. Studying these processes requires the development of advanced instrumentation capable of probing magnetization dynamics at the shortest timescales and the smallest length scales. His research group develops new optical and electrical approaches to push detection limits, enabling development of new materials and structures to meet the information storage and processing demands of the future.

Recent Work

  • Video

    10.21.20-MRL-Spintronics-Beach

    October 21, 2020Conference Video Duration: 32:31
    Geoffrey Beach
    Co-director, Materials Research Laboratory (MRL)

    A major obstacle for future progress in microelectronics is reducing power consumption.  Devices that exploit the electron spin degree of freedom together with, or instead of, its charge, provide a pathway to meet this challenge.  Solid-state spin-based devices have already entered the marketplace for nonvolatile memory applications, and the door to broader computing applications is now open.  In this talk I will describe recently-discovered mechanisms, materials, and devices that offer a spin-based approach to augment conventional electronics as current technologies approach the end of their roadmap.