Breve historia de la magnetorresistencia gigante: de Fert y Grünberg a la Espintrónica actual.

Abstract

Albert Fert and Peter Grünberg have been awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize for the discovery of Giant Magnetoresistance (GMR). Their work in the late eighties, marked the beginning of a new era for electronics in which not only the charge of electron, but also its spin could be used in potential applications. Only two decades after their discovery, GMR devices are used in commercial applications like the reading heads for magnetic recording media. Nevertheless, we are still at the beginning of this new road that could lead to new physical phenomena and new applications. In this paper we present an overview of the present and future of this new branch of the magnetism that started with the work of Fert and Grünberg: the birth of spintronics.