Professor Atsufumi Hirohata (PI)

Research Interests

Dr Atsufumi Hirohata is a Professor in Nanoelectronics since October 2014 after joining the Department of Electronics (now Department of Electronic Engineering) in September 2007. He has over 15 years of experience in spintronics, ranging from magnetic-domain imaging to spin-current interference. Before coming to York, he was a researcher at RIKEN, a Japanese governmental research institute, for over two years, where he designed a spin-current interference device, which can be used as a spin operation in a spintronic three-terminal transistor. He was before working as a postdoctoral researcher at Tohoku University, and successfully fabricated a perfectly ordered epitaxial full-Heusler alloy films, which was the first report to their knowledge and was acknowledged by several awards. He also worked as a postdoctoral associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he demonstrated basic function of a phase-change memory, which has been recently released in a market by Intel. He received his PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge in 2001 and then served as a research associate at the Cavendish Laboratory to complete his study on spin detection of optically pumped spin-polarised electrons in a semiconductor with using a ferromagnetic overlayers, which attracted great interests, resulting a few invited talks and papers. He was originally graduated from Keio University for his BSc and MSc studies in Physics.

During this time he has secured seven major research grants with a total value of GBP 12M. He has maintained a high level of publication throughout his career having published 150 refereed works, and 6 book chapters (including 2 edited books). These include Nature Materials, Nature Electronics, Advanced Functional Materials, Nature Communications, Physical Review Letters, Scientific Reports and Applied Physics Letters. He has also filed 36 patents (including 7 pending). His H-index is currently 27 (31) and my work has been cited over 2,400 (3,700) times in total by Web of Science (Google Scholar). Full list of publications can be found at Publications page.

He has also given over 150 invited talks since 2007 including at prestigious meetings such as an Intermag conference in Ireland, MMM conference in USA, and UK-Korea workshop on New Trends in Magnetism in Korea, an UK-Japan workshop on Organic Electronics in London and the Seagate Conclave in Belfast and at other leading centres such as the Naval Research Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory in the USA. Full list of presentations can be found at Presentations page.

He has actively involving the activities of the IEEE Magnetics Society by being the President-Elect (2021-22), Secretary-Treasurer (2019-20), Chair of the Education Committee (2017-18) etc. He is also an Editor of Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, a Deputy Editor of Science and Technology of Advanced Materials an editorial board member of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics, Spin, Frontiers in Physics, SciNotes, Magnetochemistry and Scientific Reports.

His present research interests include fabrication of a spin operator and growth of a half-metalic film. Further details can be found in research.

Awards and Honours

Altmetrics Awards,
"Heusler alloys for spintronic devices: Review on recent development and future perspectives,"
Science and Technology of Advanced Materials, December 2021.
Global Peer Review Awards,
"Top 1% in Field Excellent Reviews,"
Publons, October 2019.
Poster Award at the NIMS Academic Symposium,
"Tunnel magnetoresitstance of equiatomic quaternary CoFeCrAl Heusler alloy films,"
Tsukuba, Japan, October 2018.
Best Poster Award at the Magnetism 2015 Conference,
"Crystallographic optmisation of Co₂FeSi with perpendicular anisotropy,"
Leeds, March 2015.
Best Poster Award at the Magnetism 2015 Conference,
"Characterisation of polycrystalline Heusler alloys,"
Leeds, March 2015.
Highlights of 2014 in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics,
"Growth of polycrystalline Heusler alloys for spintronic devices,"
Bristol, December 2014.
Highlights of 2014 in Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics,
"Future perspectives for spintronic devices (invited review),"
Bristol, December 2014.
Wohlfarth Lecture,
"Nano-spintronics,"
Manchester, April 2014.
Royal Society Industry Fellowship,
"On-chip racetrack memory,"
London, October 2013 - September 2017.
Best Presentation Award at the 12th Joint MMM-Intermag Conference,
"Transport and structural properties of the abrupt Fe/GaAs(001) interface,"
Chicago, IL, USA, January 2013.
WUN-Spin 07 Best Poster Award,
"Structural and Magnetic Properties of Epitaxial Co-Based Full-Heusler Alloy Films,"
York, August 2007.
RIKEN President Award,
"Spin-current interference in a non-magnetic nano-ring,"
Wako, Japan, January 2007.
Magnetics Society of Japan Outstanding Presentation Award,
"Spin-current interference in a non-magnetic nano-ring,"
Matsue, Japan, November 2006.
Magnetics Society of Japan Young Scientist Award,
"Structural and magnetic properties of L2₁-structured Co₂(Cr,Fe)Al thin films,"
Nagano, Japan, September 2005.
Finalists of the Best Student Presentation Award in the MMM-Intermag Conference,
"Observation of ballistic spin-polarized electron transport in spin-valve structures,"
San Antonio, TX, USA, January 2001.
Materials Research Society Graduate Student Silver Award,
"Spin dependent electron transport through the ferromagnet/semiconductor interface,"
San Francisco, CA, USA, April 1999.

Activities

Editor of Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials,
Elsevier, August 2015 - present.
Editorial Board Member of Frontiers in Condensed Matter Physics,
Frontiers, August 2013 - present.
Editorial Board Members of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics,
Institute of Physics Publishing, November 2011 - present.
Editorial Board Members of SPIN,
World Scientific Publishing, August 2010 - present.
Editorial Advisory Board Members of Open Condensed Matter Physics Journals,
Bentham Science Publishers, June 2007 - November 2011.