June 2018

Researchers from the University of Lorraine in France have discovered that multilayers films made of cobalt (Co) and nickel (Ni) hold great promise for STT-MRAM applications.

It was already shown before that Co/Ni multilayers have very good properties for spintronics applications, but up until now it wasn't clear if the films have a sufficiently large intrinsic spin polarization, which is necessary to create and maintain spin-polarized currents in spintronic devices. It was now shown that the films have a spin polarization of about 90% - which is similar to the best spintronic materials.

ARM announced that it is developing a compiler for embedded MRAM (eMRAM) for use with Samsung Foundry's 28nm fully-depleted silicon-on-insulator (FDSOI) integrated circuit manufacturing process. ARM completed its first eMARM IP test chip tape out, and the compiler will be available for use by lead partners in 4Q18.

ARM says that the eMRAM compiler can generate instances to replace Flash, EEPROM and slow SRAM/data buffer memories with a single non-volatile fast memory – particularly suited for cost- and power-sensitive IoT applications. The eMRAM can be integrated with as few as three additional masks, while embedded flash requires greater than 12 additional masks at 40nm and below.

Researchers from Imec fabricated spin-orbit torque MRAM (SOT-MRAM) devices on 300mm wafers using CMOS compatible processes. The researchers say that these devices offer unlimited endurance, fast switching speeds and low power consumption.

Imec says that SOT-MRAM can overcome the limitation of spin-transfer torque in MRAM memories, but up until now it was only demonstrated in a lab. The core of the SOT-MRAM is a magnetic tunnel junction in which a thin dielectric layer is sandwiched between a magnetic fixed layer and a magnetic free layer. SOT-MRAM devices feature switching of the free magnetic layer done by injecting an in-plane current in an adjacent SOT layer, unlike STT-MRAM where the current is injected perpendicularly into the magnetic tunnel junction and the read and write operation is performed through the same path.