Abstract
The field of spintronics has attracted tremendous attention recently owing to its ability to offer a solution for the present-day problem of increased power dissipation in electronic circuits while scaling down the technology. Spintronic-based structures utilize electron’s spin degree of freedom, which makes it unique with zero standby leakage, low power consumption, infinite endurance, a good read and write performance, nonvolatile nature, and easy 3D integration capability with the present-day electronic circuits based on CMOS technology. All these advantages have catapulted the aggressive research activities to employ spintronic devices in memory units and also revamped the concept of processing-in-memory architecture for the future. This review article explores the essential milestones in the evolutionary field of spintronics. It includes various physical phenomena such as the giant magnetoresistance effect, tunnel magnetoresistance effect, spin-transfer torque, spin Hall effect, voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy effect, and current-induced domain wall/skyrmions motion. Further, various spintronic devices such as spin valves, magnetic tunnel junctions, domain wall-based race track memory, all spin logic devices, and recently buzzing skyrmions and hybrid magnetic/silicon-based devices are discussed. A detailed description of various switching mechanisms to write the information in these spintronic devices is also reviewed. An overview of hybrid magnetic /silicon-based devices that have the capability to be used for processing-in-memory (logic-in-memory) architecture in the immediate future is described in the end. In this article, we have attempted to introduce a brief history, current status, and future prospectus of the spintronics field for a novice.
Highlights
Advancements in the field of fabrication technology have sustained the downscaling of CMOS technology over the past five decades due to which performance of the integrated circuits (ICs) has consistently improved following the Moore’s law [1, 2]
The lateral symmetry was broken to obtain asymmetry by varying the thickness of the insulating layer (TaO), and the field-like spin–orbit torque (SOT), which assists in the switching, depends upon the direction of the charge current flowing in NM material, Ta (It is in the perpendicular direction)
Beginning with different types of spin-valve devices and its working principle, we reviewed conventional magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) along with recently developed different types of MTJ devices such as double-interface MTJ (DI-MTJ) and double-barrier MTJ (DMTJ)
Summary
Advancements in the field of fabrication technology have sustained the downscaling of CMOS technology over the past five decades due to which performance of the integrated circuits (ICs) has consistently improved following the Moore’s law [1, 2]. In order to fulfill these aggressive demands, semiconductor fabs and device engineers have come up with the variants of semiconductors such as fin field-effect transistor (FinFET) [12, 13] and carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNTFET) [14, 15] devices Circuits consisting of these devices have promised to reduce the power dissipation to some extent and are widely used at present in ICs. there is an urge to find alternatives for the future, which leads to go beyond CMOS technology [10, 16, 17]. Unlike in conventional CMOS technology, where the stored charge is lost due to leakage current, the spin and magnetization of an electron are retained indefinitely in spintronic devices. Though SRAM is faster, it suffers from an increased standby power dissipation problem due to leakage current caused by scaling of the MOSFETs. Whereas, L3–L4 cache consisting of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) suffers from depreciation of stored charge and requires regular refreshing circuits, which increases the power hungriness of these circuits. More information about straintronics and its applications can be found in the Refs. [54–61]
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
