Extended scalability and functionalities of MRAM based on thermally assisted writing

Diény, B.; Sousa, R. C.; Bandiera, S.; Souza, M. Castro; Auffret, S.; Rodmacq, B.; Nozières, J. P.; Hérault, Jeanny; Gapihan, E.; Prejbeanu, I. L.; Ducruet, C.; Portemont, C.; Mackay, K.; Cambou, Bertrand

doi:10.1109/iedm.2011.6131471

Cited by 16 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 6 publications

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“…In a second possible implementation of TA-MRAM, the reference layer is no longer pinned but is made of a soft magnetic material with easily switchable magnetization [128] The storage layer is exchange biased by an adjacent 1) Data set field pulse "0"…”

Section: Ta-mram With Soft Reference: Magnetic Logic Unit (Mlu)mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory

2016

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A review of the developments in MRAM technology over the past 20 years is presented. The various MRAM generations are described with a particular focus on Spin-Transfer-Torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) which is currently receiving the greatest attention. The working principles of these various MRAM generations, the status of their developments, and demonstrations of working circuits, including already commercialized MRAM products, are discussed.

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Section: Ta-mram With Soft Reference: Magnetic Logic Unit (Mlu)mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, these devices combine memory and logic (XOR) functions. For this reason, they are called Magnetic Logic Units (MLU™) [128]. In addition to being storage devices, self-referenced MRAM intrinsically allows performing logic comparison functions.…”

Section: Bitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory

2016

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“…For the above reasons, MRAM has currently been limited into embedded memories such as drive recorders where the density is not the primary concern, [85] and it may also be a satisfactory space memory if it fulfils the temperature-range requirements. [126] To date, thermal-assisted switching (TAS) [127][128][129][130] and spintransfer torque switching (STT) [131][132][133][134][135][136] are regarded as two prospective ways for MRAM to eliminate programming errors and reduce the switching field. TAS is based on the heat-assisted magnetic recording (HAMR) concept, [137] where the current is injected through the MTJ to generate Joule heating in order to lower the magnetic anisotropy of the free layer during the write process, thus decreasing the switching current as well as the power consumption.…”

Section: Magnetic Random Access Memorymentioning

confidence: 99%

Physical principles and current status of emerging non-volatile solid state memories

Wang

Yang

Wen

2015

Electron. Mater. Lett.

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Today the influence of non-volatile solid-state memories on persons' lives has become more prominent because of their non-volatility, low data latency, and high robustness. As a pioneering technology that is representative of non-volatile solidstate memories, flash memory has recently seen widespread application in many areas ranging from electronic appliances, such as cell phones and digital cameras, to external storage devices such as universal serial bus (USB) memory. Moreover, owing to its large storage capacity, it is expected that in the near future, flash memory will replace hard-disk drives as a dominant technology in the mass storage market, especially because of recently emerging solid-state drives. However, the rapid growth of the global digital data has led to the need for flash memories to have larger storage capacity, thus requiring a further downscaling of the cell size. Such a miniaturization is expected to be extremely difficult because of the well-known scaling limit of flash memories. It is therefore necessary to either explore innovative technologies that can extend the areal density of flash memories beyond the scaling limits, or to vigorously develop alternative non-volatile solid-state memories including ferroelectric random-access memory, magnetoresistive random-access memory, phase-change random-access memory, and resistive random-access memory. In this paper, we review the physical principles of flash memories and their technical challenges that affect our ability to enhance the storage capacity. We then present a detailed discussion of novel technologies that can extend the storage density of flash memories beyond the commonly accepted limits. In each case, we subsequently discuss the physical principles of these new types of non-volatile solid-state memories as well as their respective merits and weakness when utilized for data storage applications. Finally, we predict the future prospects for the aforementioned solid-state memories for the next generation of data-storage devices based on a comparison of their performance.

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“…During the writing process, the transistor is turned on to generate a current through the MTJ, thus heating the storage layer up to the AF blocking temperature. Thanks to the circular shape of the bit cells and correlative absence of shape anisotropy, only a weak magnetic field of a few mT is then sufficient to switch the storage layer magnetization [8]. The TA-MRAM power consumption can be further reduced by sharing the field pulse between all bits of a given word [8].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thanks to the circular shape of the bit cells and correlative absence of shape anisotropy, only a weak magnetic field of a few mT is then sufficient to switch the storage layer magnetization [8]. The TA-MRAM power consumption can be further reduced by sharing the field pulse between all bits of a given word [8]. This however remains a field-written technology and therefore has also a limited downsize scalability albeit better than that of toggle MRAM thanks to the lower write field and field sharing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multilevel Thermally Assisted Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memory Based on Exchange-Biased Vortex Configurations

et al. 2016

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A new concept of multilevel thermally assisted MRAM is proposed and investigated by micromagnetic simulations. The storage cells are magnetic tunnel junctions in which the storage layer is exchange biased and in vortex configuration. The reference layer is an unpinned soft magnetic layer. The stored information is encoded via the position of the vortex core in the storage layer. This position can be varied along two degrees of freedom: radius and inplane angle. The information is read out from the amplitude and phase of the tunnel magnetoresistance signal obtained by applying a rotating field on the cell without heating the cell. Various configurations are compared in which the soft reference layer consists of either a simple ferromagnetic layer or a synthetic antiferromagnetic sandwich (SAF). Among those, the most practical is one with SAF reference layer in which the magnetostatic interaction between SAF and storage layer was minimized. This type of cells should allow to store at least 40 different states per cell representing more than 5 bits per cell.

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Extended scalability and functionalities of MRAM based on thermally assisted writing

Cited by 16 publications

References 6 publications

Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory

Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory

Physical principles and current status of emerging non-volatile solid state memories

Multilevel Thermally Assisted Magnetoresistive Random-Access Memory Based on Exchange-Biased Vortex Configurations

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