August 2010

Chinese researchers have shown that magnetic memory (MRAM), logic and sensor cells can be made faster and more energy efficient by using an electric, not magnetic, field to flip the magnetization of the sensing layer only about halfway, rather than completely to the opposite direction.

The new cell requires only two layers (traditional MRAM requires three or more layers) - and so hopefully will be easier and cheaper to make. The design is a simple thin-layer sandwich of two different materials, each of which has very different magnetic and electrical properties. Applying a voltage to the ferroelectric layer switches its polarization in a way that starts to change the magnetic orientation of the adjacent ferromagnetic layer. This partial change alters the electrical resistance of the entire stack enough to indicate whether the cell is storing a "0" or a "1" data bit.

MagSil has been working on MRAM since 2004, but we had very little information about the company till now (except for a PR from 2009 in which they said they'll soon reach full-scale commercialization). Today they have finally revealed more information. They are developing MRAM based on Magnetic Recording (iMR) cell architecture, based on a traditional magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) scheme.

The company hopes to start making a standalone 1Mb MRAM device (based on 130- and 90-nm processes) "pretty soon". They also have plans for a 64Mb chip.

The technology was originally developed by MIT and exclusively licensed to Magsil. They have filed several suits against companies over hard disk drive components using tunneling magnetoresistive (TMR) technology and have reached settlements with Western Digital, Seagate, SAW Magnetics and Headway Technologies. Litigation is still ongoing with Hitachi and Shenzen ExcelStor technology.

Scientists from Ohio University has created a new spintronics memory device from plastic. It's simply a thin strip of dark blue organic-based magnet layered with a metallic ferromagnet and connected to two electrical leads. Still, the researchers successfully recorded data on it and retrieved the data by controlling the spins of the electrons with a magnetic field. They say that the new device is a bridge between today's computers and the all-polymer, spintronic computers that the researchers hope to eventually create.