In a genuinely useful piece
of spintronics, engineers from European lab CEA, Hitachi, and
STMicroelectronics built a 13GHz spin torque RF oscillator based on
magnetic tunnelling junctions that is 50x smaller than the equivalent
LC oscillator, and tunes over 85% of its frequency compared with 15%
for LC types. Measurements over one minute show phase jitter of 36ps(RMS)
with the oscillator set at 7.36GHz. The required stack of magnetic
layers has a footprint only 90nm across and is constructed by
sputtering.
Via ElectronicsWeekly
