Vincent Sokalski (E 2009, 2011)

Assistant Research Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Bio

Professor Sokalski obtained his B.S. in Materials Science & Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh in 2007 followed by M.S. and Ph.D degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in 2009 and 2011 also in Materials Science & Engineering. During his graduate research, he studied perpendicular magnetic recording in the Data Storage Systems Center at CMU evaluating microstructural and crystallographic details of magnetic thin films to improve hard disc drive storage capacity. Following his graduate work, he spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at CMU working on spin devices for low-power memory and electronics. He joined the faculty at Carnegie Mellon University in September of 2013.

Education

Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University

Research

Our research is focused on the exploration of novel magnetic & spintronic materials for memory, logic, and HDD storage applications. We concentrate on the development of thin films & nanoscale devices that will enable improved energy efficiency, non-volatility, and scalability to ever-decreasing dimensions. Current research efforts include crystallographic & microstructural characterization of perpendicular magnetic recording media, materials for spin hall effect devices, spin transfer torque magneto-resistive random access memory (STT-MRAM), and magnetic interactions in soft nanogranular composite thin films.

Publications

(Recent selected publications)

Pellegren, J. P., V. Sokalski. Thickness and Interface-dependent Crystallization of CoFeB Alloy Thin Films. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics. (2015)[Accepted]

Bromberg, D., M. Moneck, V. Sokalski, J. Zhu, L. Pileggi, and J.G. Zhu, Experimental demonstration of four-terminal magnetic logic device with separate read- and write-paths. Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), 2014 IEEE International, 2014: p. 33.1.1-33.1.4.

Sokalski, V., Bromberg, D., Moneck, M., Yang, E., & Zhu, J.-G. Increased perpendicular TMR in FeCoB/MgO/FeCoB magnetic tunnel junctions by seedlayer modifications. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 49(7), 4383-4385. (2013).

Sokalski, V., Bromberg, D., Morris, D., Moneck, M. T., Yang, E., Pileggi, L., & Zhu, J.-G. Naturally Oxidized FeCo as a Magnetic Coupling Layer for Electrically Isolated Read/Write Paths in mLogic. IEEE Transactions on Magnetics, 49(7). (2013).

Sokalski, V., Moneck, M. T., Yang, E., & Zhu, J.-G. Optimization of Ta thickness for perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction applications in the MgO-FeCoB-Ta system. Applied Physics Letters, 101(072411), 4. (2012).