Open AccessHigh-Density NAND-Like Spin Transfer Torque Memory With Spin Orbit Torque Erase Operation
Author(s) -
Zhaohao Wang,
Lei Zhang,
Mengxing Wang,
Zilu Wang,
Daoqian Zhu,
Youguang Zhang,
Weisheng Zhao
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
ieee electron device letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.337
H-Index - 154
eISSN - 1558-0563
pISSN - 0741-3106
DOI - 10.1109/led.2018.2795039
Subject(s) - engineered materials, dielectrics and plasmas , components, circuits, devices and systems
We present a NAND-like spintronics memory (NAND-SPIN) device for high-density non-volatile memory applications. Fast erasing and programming of magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) are implemented with two unidirectional currents generating spin orbit torque (SOT) and spin transfer torque (STT), respectively. The asymmetric switching drawback of STT mechanism can be definitively overcome as only anti-parallel to parallel operation happens for NAND-SPIN programming, which allows lower switching current, smaller access transistor, and reduced maximum write voltage across the MTJ. By sharing the SOT-induced erase operation in a nanowire, the area overhead due to the three-terminal structure can be also eliminated. Simulation results show that NAND-SPIN can achieve 3 ~ 5× reduction in write energy compared to STT-MRAM, and 2 ~ 4× less bit-cell area than SOT-MRAM at 28 nm node.