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EMCORE, PSI-Zurich to Collaborate on lll-V Semiconductor Research EMCORE Corporation and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) hâve finalized a collaborative technology agreement involving an extensive research program to optimize reactor growth parameters in III-V compound semiconductor materials. EMCORE (Somerset, NJ) will manufacture and deliver a metalorganic chemical vapor déposition System and direct an extensive training program. Both organizations will share me results obtained in the development of growth processes designed to produce high quality III-V compound semiconductors including InGaAsP-InP and AlGaAs-GaAs quantum well and double heterostructure lasers. The agreement signifies PSI-Zurich's first step in establishing an optoelectronics technology center for III-V compound semiconductors. In line with its new function as a Swiss goverment research laboratory, the center's facilities will include a cleanroom with a processing line in addition to modem equipment for materials characterization. The facilities will be made available to universities and industry. PSIZurich will coordinate its activities with the Swiss Fédéral Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne, where III-V semiconductor research is ongoing, and will concentrate its efforts in industrially relevant areas. PSI-Zurich, with a staff of about 55, is part of the Paul Scherrer Institute, a large government research organization located some 30 miles west of Zurich. Its activities include research in solid-state optoelectronics, optics, and image processing.

Thin-Film Recording Head Helps Demonstrate Gigabit Storage Density An expérimental dual-element, thinfilm recording head was recently used by IBM scientists and engineers during a démonstration of gigabit storage density. The demonstrated data density, a billion bits of information on a single square inch of disk surface, was 15 to 30 rimes greater than that of current "hard disk" magnetic storage devices. Composed of several layers of very thin films, the new head is made by photolithographic methods common in the semiconductor industry. It features an inductive "write" élément and a magnetoresistive (MR) "read" élément that can detect recorded magnetic bits too small for a conventional inductive head to recognize. The MR élément also has the advantage of sim-

ilar performance over ail disk sizes and speeds. Both éléments operate while the head Aies over the disk at a height of less than 2 millionths of an inch. Heads in currently available disk drives fly from 6 to 15 millionths of an inch above the disk surface. The MR head used in the démonstration is similar in principle to one introduced in 1984, but the recorded tracks in the démonstration were more than 100 rimes narrower than previously. The disk used in the démonstration was an aluminum disk coated with a thin film of a magnetic cobalt alloy designed for very high bit density and very low magnetic noise. A thin coating of a hard material protects the alloy film from contact with the recording head. In the démonstration, b