June 2022

A new study, coordinated by ICN2 group leaders and ICREA professors Prof. Stephan Roche and Prof. Sergio O. Valenzuela, and by Prof. Hyunsoo Yang from the National University of Singapore, examined the current developments and challenges in regards to MRAM, and outlined the opportunities that can arise by incorporating two-dimensional material technologies. It highlighted the fundamental properties of atomically smooth interfaces, the reduced material intermixing, the crystal symmetries and the proximity effects as the key drivers for possible disruptive improvements for MRAM at advanced technology nodes.

The research was carried out by a collaboration of various members of the Graphene Flagship project consortium, including various institutes of the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS, France), Imec (Belgium), Thales Research and Technology (France), and the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), as well as key industries such as Samsung Electronics (South Korea) and Global Foundries (Singapore).

Researchers in Germany, led by the Max Born Institute, have developed a novel technique to obtain “in depth” and time-resolved view on magnetization, employing broadband femtosecond soft X-ray pulses to study the transient evolution of magnetization depth profiles within a magnetic thin film system. This is vital as the future development of functional magnetic devices based on ultrafast optical manipulation of spins requires an understanding of the depth-dependent spin dynamics across the interfaces of complex magnetic heterostructures.

In current information technology, functional magnetic devices typically consist of stacks of thin layers of magnetic and nonmagnetic materials, each only about one nanometer thick. The stacking, choice of atomic species, and the resulting interfaces between the layers are key to the particular function, for example as realized in the giant magnetoresistance read heads in all magnetic hard drives. Over the last years, it was shown that ultrashort laser pulses down to the femtosecond range (1 femtosecond = 10-15 s) can effectively and very fast manipulate the magnetization in a material, allowing a transient change or even permanent reversal of the magnetization state. While these effects have been predominantly studied in simple model systems, future applications will require an understanding of magnetization dynamics in more complex structures with nanometer-scale heterogeneity.