Proposal for a Nanoscale Superconductive Memory

Abstract

Energy efficiency is a key issue for modern high performance computing. Superconductive digital electronics has already demonstrated superior performances in terms of speed and energy dissipations. However, there is still the open issue of the realization of effective submicron scale superconductive memories. Superconducting nanowires represent the state-of-the-art of single-photon detectors. Their technology has also been used to realize three-terminal active devices, where the output response is triggered by a current pulse. The combination of the electrothermal mechanism of the nanowire and the magnetic coupling with a suitable material can be used for the realization of a nanowire-based memory device scalable to nanoscale. The principle of operation and material requirements are presented here. In particular, the feasibility of the proposed device using EuS as magnetic material and NbN as nanowire is discussed. By using a physical model of the nanowire dynamics, in terms of the spatial distribution of electron and phonon temperatures, the feasibility of the proposed device has been verified, through numerical simulations. The device configurations considered have the specific goal of realizing reliable and high-speed read and write operations, with the possibility of scalability to nanoscale.