Memory

The University of Minnesota Twin Cities, in collaboration with Polar Semiconductor and Honeywell Aerospace, is establishing a first-of-its-kind academic-industry Spin Technology Center to advance the state’s growing microelectronics and semiconductor industry. The $5.7 million project has been awarded $2.83 million from the Minnesota Forward Fund administered by the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, with an additional $2.8 million in matching funding from industry partners Polar Semiconductor and Honeywell Aerospace.

The new center will develop quantum spintronic devices focusing on high-tech magnetic sensors and advanced memory storage. These devices are being adapted for cutting-edge applications, including biomedical devices, industrial automation, automotive applications and specialized technologies designed for extreme environments like space.

Researchers from the University of Tokyo, RIKEN and Tokyo Metropolitan University have demonstrated an ultrafast, energy-efficient nonvolatile switching device based on antiferromagnetic Mn₃Sn, achieving reliable operation in the picosecond regime with dramatically reduced power consumption.

The device is built on Mn₃Sn/tantalum heterostructures and utilizes spin–orbit torque (SOT) to switch the magnetic state using electrical pulses as short as 40 picoseconds. This represents a roughly 1,000× speed improvement over conventional nanosecond-scale switching, which has long been a practical limit in current CPU and GPU technologies due to rapidly increasing energy demands at higher speeds.

Everspin Technologies has announced a strategic manufacturing agreement with Microchip Technology to expand on-shore production of its MRAM and tunnel magnetoresistive (TMR) sensor products. The initial 10-year deal, which can be extended in two-year increments, will see Everspin establish a copy exact (plus) MRAM line at a Microchip semiconductor fabrication facility in Oregon, mirroring its existing line in Chandler, Arizona.

Under the agreement, Everspin will transfer its magnetic technology and MRAM manufacturing process into Microchip’s Oregon fab while retaining ownership of its spintronic IP and process know-how, using Microchip’s foundry capacity to scale output. This added line is designed to increase wafer capacity for MRAM and TMR devices, provide a fully on-shore second source, and support long-term supply continuity for spintronics-based non-volatile memory and sensor products well into the next decade.

Researchers at the University of Waterloo recently demonstrated fully electrical, field‑free control of perpendicular magnetization using spin‑orbit torque (SOT) in a low‑symmetry 2D magnet/topological‑insulator heterostructure, paving the way for scalable, energy‑efficient spintronic memory and logic devices.

Stacking the three-fold symmetry of BiSbTe on top of the two-fold symmetry of intercalated-CrTe, the interface only permits a unidirectional symmetry which produces an extremely strong out-of-plane spin torque and can deterministically switch a very hard, perpendicular magnet with ease. Image credit: University of Waterloo  

Modern MRAM and related spintronic memories need dense, robust perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) bits that can be switched deterministically with low energy consumption, but conventional SOT easily switches only in‑plane moments and typically requires an external bias field to tilt perpendicular spins “up” or “down”. In perpendicular configurations, bits point out of the film plane, which boosts storage density but makes the energy‑efficient, fully electrical control of their state difficult. Standard heavy‑metal/ferromagnet stacks already break out‑of‑plane symmetry and can support in‑plane switching, yet deterministic out‑of‑plane reversal demands breaking additional in‑plane symmetries - usually via an applied magnetic field, which adds circuit complexity, power overhead, and risks cross‑talk between neighboring bits.

Researchers from at Southern University of Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University and other institutes recently reported a spintronic compute-in-memory (CIM) macro designed to improve computational efficiency in artificial intelligence hardware. The device is a 64-kb non-volatile digital CIM macro fabricated using 40-nm spin-transfer torque magnetic random-access memory (STT-MRAM) technology, which stores information through the magnetic orientation of nanometer-scale layers.

Conventional computing architectures separate memory and processing units, requiring frequent data transfer that increases latency and energy consumption. CIM designs address this limitation by integrating storage and computation, though most prior implementations have relied on analog operations that constrain accuracy, scalability, and robustness. The newly developed digital CIM architecture addresses these limitations by combining the endurance and non-volatility of STT-MRAM with digitally controlled computation.

An international research team that included researchers from Chalmers University of Technology, Kyushu University and DGIST has developed a new fabrication method for energy-efficient magnetic random-access memory (MRAM). The new method relies on a material called thulium iron garnet (TmIG) which has been attracting global attention for its ability to enable high-speed, low-power information rewriting at room temperature. 

The team hopes these new findings will lead to significant improvements in the speed and power efficiency of high-computing hardware, such as those used to power generative AI.

Antiferromagnets are attracting growing attention as promising complements to conventional ferromagnets. While their properties have been extensively studied, clear demonstrations of their technological advantages have remained elusive. Now, researchers from Tohoku University, the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), and the Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) managed to provide compelling evidence of the unique benefits of antiferromagnets. Their recent study shows that antiferromagnets enable high-speed, high-efficiency memory operations in the gigahertz range, outperforming their ferromagnetic counterparts.

The team used the chiral antiferromagnet Mn₃Sn, whose spins form a non-collinear arrangement, as the medium for writing digital information. They fabricated a nanoscale Mn₃Sn dot device and successfully induced coherent rotation of its antiferromagnetic texture using electric currents. This enabled fast, high-fidelity control of spin ordering.

Researchers at The University of Osaka have developed a new program, “postw90-spin,” that enables high-precision calculations of a novel performance indicator for the spin Hall effect, a phenomenon crucial for developing energy-efficient and high-speed next-generation magnetic memory devices. 

This achievement addresses a long-standing challenge in spintronics research by providing a definitive measure of the spin Hall effect, overcoming ambiguities associated with traditional metrics.

A team of University of Minnesota researchers recently demonstrated a more efficient way to control magnetization in tiny electronic devices using a material called Ni₄W–a combination of nickel and tungsten. 

The team found that this low-symmetry material produces powerful spin-orbit torque (SOT)—a key mechanism for manipulating magnetism in next-generation memory and logic technologies.

Researchers at Osaka University have reported a technique for recovering magnetism in a degraded spintronics device. This method can be applied to improve the robustness of next-generation semiconductor memory.

Spintronics exploits the spin (and charge) of electrons to process and store memory, which is achieved practically by stacking layers of thin material films that behave differently under the influence of a magnetic field. “These devices can be non-volatile, low-power, and robust, but the manufacturing process can cause their magnetic properties to deteriorate,” explains Tomohiro Koyama, lead author of the study. The thin films required for these devices are often formed via sputtering, in which atoms are extracted and deposited onto a substrate. This process, however, can often lead to the magnetic layer becoming oxidized, spoiling its magnetic properties.