Memory

Prof. Albert Fert (who won the Nobel prize in 2007 for GMR) talks about GMR and Spintronics:

Researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated for the first time the existence of a key magnetic—as opposed to electronic—property of specially built semiconductor devices. This discovery raises hopes for even smaller and faster gadgets that could result from magnetic data storage in a semiconductor material, which could then quickly process the data through built-in logic circuits controlled by electric fields.

In the race to develop the next generation of storage and recording media, a major hurdle has been the difficulty of studying the tiny magnetic structures that will serve as their building blocks. Now a team of physicists at the University of California, Davis, has developed a technique to capture the magnetic “fingerprints” of certain nanostructures — even when they are buried within the boards and junctions of an electronic device.

Due to the miniscule physical dimensions of nanomagnets — some are as small as 50 atoms wide — observing their magnetic configurations has been a challenge, especially when they are not exposed but built into a functioning device.

Researchers in France and the US have lowered the current required for spin transfer down to just 120 microamps at room temperature for a device that measures 45 nm across.

Spin transfer is when the spin angular momentum of charge carriers (usually electrons) in a material is transferred from one place to another. In the MRAM industry, Spin Transfer might help to significantly reduce power consumption, but it draws a large current. But the new technique can help with that. 

Stéphane Mangin from Nancy University and colleagues may fabricated 45 nm diameter spin valves based on cobalt-nickel multilayer elements. Because these devices exhibit perpendicular anisotropy, they are thermally stable and require currents as low as 120 microamps for spin transfer switching without any applied magnetic field.

Via NanoTechWeb

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute researchers now believe that carbon nanotubes can be used to detect nanoscale magnetic states (Spin) by changing their conductance. They demonstrated the change by embedding tiny nanoparticles of magnetic cobalt into multi-walled carbon nanotubes.

The researchers furthermore claim that their findings could enable spintronics applications, nanoscale storage devices and ultra-sensitive conductance detectors.

Via EETimes

MRAM-Info just published a great interview with Dr. Saied Teharni, Everspin's COO. Everspin is the world's leading MRAM company (spun off from Freescale), and are producing MRAM chips since 2006. Dr. Saied reveals plans for higher-density MRAM in 2009 - 16Mbit. Today's chips only go to 4Mbit. He also predicts that by 2015 MRAM will be able to compete with DRAM and FLASH (NOR) with densities.

MRAM is one of the most exciting Spintronics technologies, being commercialized today. 

Aviza Technology, a supplier of advanced semiconductor capital equipment and process technologies for the global semiconductor industry and related markets, today announced the introduction of StratIon(TM) fxP, the world's first 300-mm ready Ion Beam Deposition system.

Grandis announced that it has been awarded $6.0 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the initial phase of research to develop spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) chips (for the 45 nm technology node and beyond). The total value of the effort, if all phases of the development program are completed, could be up to $14.7 million over four years.

A research team at Singapore A*STAR's Data Storage Institute (DSI) has invented a new phase change material that has the potential to change the design of future memory storage devices.

Phase change materials are substances that are capable of changing their structure between amorphous and crystalline at high speed. Currently, these materials are used to make Phase change memory (PCM), the most promising alternative to replace FLASH memory.

Conventionally, PCM is worked by changing phase change materials' structure through applying an electric current. Now, phase change might be effected by means of switching the new phase change materials by using magnetic fields.

The DSI research team led by Shi Luping, Ph.D., created this first phase change magnetic material by introducing iron atoms into Germanium-Antimony-Tellurium alloys (or GeSbTe) containing non-magnetic elements.