Thermally Assisted Skyrmion Memory (TA-SKM)

Abstract

A novel thermally assisted skyrmion memory (TA-SKM) has been proposed and studied for the first time. Unidirectional current-induced spin transfer torque (STT) and Joule heating effect are used to induce the magnetization switching between uniform and skyrmion states in the free layer of a magnetic tunnel junction device. Physics-based simulations suggest that TA-SKM offers advantages including unipolar switching feature for cross-point memory integration, better TMR design as compared to STT-MRAM, and improved operation temperature range as compared to TA-MRAM.