Antiparallel Resistance Research Articles

Temperature effect on a weighted vortex spin-torque nano-oscillator for neuromorphic computing

In this work, we present fabricated magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) that can serve as magnetic memories (MMs) or vortex spin-torque nano-oscillators (STNOs) depending on the device geometry. We explore the heating effect on the devices to study how the performance of a neuromorphic computing system (NCS) consisting of MMs and STNOs can be enhanced by temperature. We further applied a neural network for waveform classification applications. The resistance of MMs represents the synaptic weights of the NCS, while temperature acts as an extra degree of freedom in changing the weights and TMR, as their anti-parallel resistance is temperature sensitive, and parallel resistance is temperature independent. Given the advantage of using heat for such a network, we envision using a vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser (VCSEL) to selectively heat MMs and/or STNO when needed. We found that when heating MMs only, STNO only, or both MMs and STNO, from 25 to 75 °C, the output power of the STNO increases by 24.7%, 72%, and 92.3%, respectively. Our study shows that temperature can be used to improve the output power of neural networks, and we intend to pave the way for future implementation of a low-area and high-speed VCSEL-assisted spintronic NCS.

Influence of surface acoustic wave (SAW) on nanoscale in-plane magnetic tunnel junctions

The use of voltage induced strain to switch magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) is a promising solution for reducing the switching energy in MRAM technologies. The MTJ is integrated with a piezoelectric layer to generate the strain. A very thin layer is needed to switch with small voltages and small energy dissipation. It is challenging to synthesize ultrathin piezoelectric layers that retain a high degree of piezoelectricity. An alternate approach is to use time-varying strain generated by a surface acoustic wave (SAW). This approach does not require a thin piezoelectric layer since the SAW is confined to the surface of the layer. In this study, we fabricated in-plane MTJs on piezoelectric LiNbO3 substrates and used IDTs to generate the SAW signal within the substrate. Our results showed that the SAW signal had a significant influence on the resistance and the tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) ratio of the MTJs. The influence was much less significant in nanometer size MTJs than in micrometer sized ones. Most surprisingly, the SAW signal caused the tunneling magnetoresistance ratio (TMR) to drop below zero for the micrometer size MTJ, meaning that the antiparallel resistance RAP is temporarily less than the parallel resistance RP under SAW excitation. Our results provide insight into the dynamic behavior of MTJs under periodic strain and the dependence of this behavior on the device dimensions as they are scaled down to nanometer sizes.

Design of Ultracompact Content Addressable Memory Exploiting 1T-1MTJ Cell

Content addressable memories (CAMs) are a promising category of computing-in-memory (CiM) elements that can perform highly parallel and efficient search operations for routers, pattern matching, and other data-intensive applications. Various magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) based content addressable memory (CAM) designs have been proposed to realize zero standby power and high performance search. However, due to the relatively small tunnel magneto-resistance (TMR) ratio, MTJ based CAMs require extra transistors and differential MTJ branches to distinguish between the parallel and anti-parallel resistance states, resulting in significant area and energy overhead. In this paper, we propose a device-circuit co-design approach for an ultra-compact CAM design by only exploiting an 1T-1MTJ structure in each cell. We propose a 2-step search scheme to enable the parallel in-memory search operation across the proposed CAM array, and demonstrate the sufficient sensing margin of the array in a successful search operation. Evaluation results suggest that our proposed 1T-1MTJ based CAM design improves 179X/301X area efficiency compared with the state-of-the-art 15T-4MTJ/20T-6MTJ CAM design. Application benchmarking on hyperdimensional computing (HDC) inference shows a 54.6X/12.8X speedup compared with GPU/20T-6MTJ CAM based approaches.

Analysis and Simulation of Interface Quality and Defect Induced Variability in MgO Spin-Transfer Torque Magnetic RAMs

Device-to-device variability of CoFeB/MgO based STT-MRAMs is studied based on experiments and simulations taking into account the influence of interface quality, temperature variation and device dimensionality. Metal-induced gap states resulting from electron transfer at the ferromagnet-tunnel barrier interface significantly influence the effective energy barrier height of these devices irrespective of their diameters. Switching voltage and parallel - antiparallel resistance values vary by as much as 43% and 30% respectively for about 13% variation of the energy barrier, whereas the tunneling magnetoresistance remains typically unaffected. WRITE cycles of highly scaled STT-MRAMs are therefore more susceptible to device-to-device variations resulting from microscopic variations in the interface quality, rather than the READ cycles. Such variations are observed to be independent of temperature, as well as spatial distribution of the defects.

Effects of temperature on the magnetic tunnel junctions with periodic grating barrier

We have developed a tunneling theory to describe the temperature dependence of tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) of the magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with periodic grating barrier. Through the Patterson function approach, the theory can handle easily the influence of the lattice distortion of the barrier on the tunneling process of the electrons. The lattice distortion of the barrier is sensible to the temperature and can be quite easily weakened by the thermal relaxation of the strain, and thus the tunneling process of the electrons will be significantly altered with the variation of the temperature of the system. That is just the physical mechanism for the temperature dependence of the TMR. From it, we find two main results: 1. The decrease of TMR with rising temperature is mostly carried by a change in the antiparallel resistance (RAP), and the parallel resistance (RP) changes so little that it seems roughly constant, if compared to the RAP. 2. For the annealed MTJ, the RAP is significantly more sensitive to the strain than the RP, and for non-annealed MTJ, both the RP and RAP are not sensitive to the strain. They are both in agreement with the experiments of the MgO-based MTJs. Other relevant properties are also discussed.

Ab initio study of mono-layer 2-D insulators (X-(OH)2 and h-BN) and their use in MTJ memory device

The paper presents an ab initio study of the 2-D insulators and their effect on the performance of a magnetic tunnel junction memory (MTJ) device. MTJ devices has been considered as an alternate to the charge based data storage cells due to its spin-polarised operation and high scaling probability. The use of 2-D insulators like X-(OH)2 (X: Ca and Mg) and h-BN (hexagonal-Boron Nitride) in such device would be interesting. The authors have calculated the band structures, density of states and effective mass of electrons and holes for the mono-layer of these three non-conventional 2-D insulators using the first principle calculations in density functional theory framework using Quantumwise ATK tool. The ab initio calculation yielded band gap (Eg) of 4.633, 4.685 and 4.249 eV for h-BN, Ca(OH)2 and Mg(OH)2, respectively. The effective mass of electrons was calculated as 0.621, 0.604 and 0.478 for single layer h-BN, Ca(OH)2 and Mg(OH)2, respectively. While for holes it is 0.834, 0.446 and 0.407, respectively for h-BN, Ca(OH)2 and Mg(OH)2. The MTJ device properties as tunneling-magneto resistance, differential TMR, parallel and anti-parallel resistance, differential resistance and spin transfer torque components (in-plane and out-of-plane) with these materials as composite dielectric has been reported in this paper using MTJ Lab tool. The performance of MTJ memory device with h-BN based composite dielectric is found better.

Multi-Terminal Spin Valve on Channels with Spin-Momentum Locking.

It is experimentally established that charge current flowing in a channel with spin-momentum locking such as topological insulator surface states or Rashba interfaces induces a spin voltage, which can be electrically measured with a ferromagnetic contact along the current path. Using this fact in conjunction with Onsager reciprocity arguments, we make the surprising prediction that the anti-parallel resistance of a spin valve can be either larger or smaller than the parallel resistance depending on the direction of spin flow relative to the direction of spin-momentum locking. However, we argue that this remarkable signature of spin-momentum locking can only be observed in multi-terminal measurements. Two-terminal measurements in the linear response regime, will show a single anti-parallel resistance larger than the parallel resistance as commonly observed in channels without spin-orbit coupling. We support this result with detailed numerical calculations based on a semiclassical model that provides insight into the underlying physics.

Macro model for stochastic behavior of resistance distribution of magnetic tunnel junction

In this work, we fabricated MgO-based magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) samples to observe behavior of resistance variation, and investigated a stochastic behavior model for MTJ resistance from measured real data. We found the relationship between parallel resistance (RP), anti-parallel resistance (RAP), and TMR from the measurements. The variation of barrier thickness affects not only resistance but also TMR. This means that broad RAP distribution is caused by RP distribution. In addition, RAP distribution can be reduced by increasing temperature and bias voltage. We developed a macro model that can evaluate resistance distribution based on the stochastic behavior of MTJ resistance variation from only tox varied. The amount of resistance variation, which is considered with regard to the circuit performance, can be obtained from Δtox designed by designer. In addition, the impact for operating circumstance such as bias and temperature can be considered by using fit equations.

Piezoelectric enhancement of giant magnetoresistance in spin-valves with different magnetic anisotropies

The phenomenon of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) in spin-valves under applied magnetic field is well established. We present piezoelectric control of the GMR ratio at room temperature for standard multilayered spin-valve structure fabricated on (011)-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) piezoelectric substrate. Four samples namely, S1, S2, S3, and S4 were, respectively, fabricated such that the magnetic easy axis makes an initial angle of 0°, 30°, 45°, and 60° with magnetic field applied during measurement. For S1, the GMR ratio decreases under electric field whereas it increases for the samples making progressively larger initial magnetization angles with the external field. We suggest that for S1, magnetic alignment between the two magnetic layers decreases due to the rotation of bottom free layer magnetization resulting in the decrease of antiparallel resistance as well as the GMR ratio under applied electric field whereas for the other samples, the antiparallel resistance increases due to improvement in antiparallel alignment between the two magnetic layers causing increase in the GMR ratio at room temperature. Our results establish new way to control and even enhance the magnetoresistance via converse piezoelectric effect in spin-valves with different magnetic anisotropies.

Coexistence of tunneling magnetoresistance and electroresistance at room temperature in La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/(Ba, Sr)TiO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 multiferroic tunnel junctions

Tunnel junctions composed of two ferromagnetic electrodes separated by a ferroelectric barrier were fabricated from epitaxial La0.7Sr0.3MnO3/Ba0.95Sr0.05TiO3/La0.7Sr0.3MnO3 trilayers. Typical R−H curves with sharp-switched resistance states (magnetic parallel and antiparallel) of magnetic tunnel junctions have been observed up to room temperature. After applying a poling voltage, which reverses the barrier polarization, both the parallel and antiparallel resistance states will switch to different values. Clear tunneling magnetoresistance and tunneling electroresistance, hence the four resistance states have been observed at room temperature.