Methods And Systems For Magnetoelectronic Elements And Arrays

Summary

UCLA researchers in the Department of Electrical Engineering have developed a magnetoelectric memory array, which uses a crossbar architecture to achieve high density.

Background

Excessive power consumption and manufacturing costs have become chief roadblocks to the further scaling of semiconductors, electronics and systems that are necessitated by the storage and transmission of excessive amounts of information. Memory and logic circuits to store the excessive amounts of information are prevalent in devices that have computational functions, processors that need memory for their own operational software code, and for a variety of other purposes including videos, images, temporary storage, data processing and so on. All these examples generally involve large amounts of memory circuits that occupy much semiconductor die area or cause much power dissipation.

Innovation

Researchers at UCLA have developed cell structures, arrays and circuits that include magnetoelectric (ME) elements such as voltage-controlled magnetic tunnel junction devices. The magnetoelectric memory involves writing of information (i.e. switching to different states) performed by using electric fields (i.e. voltages). The crossbar array with different ME bit designs operates based on the principle of applying different unipolar write voltages (i.e. electric fields, rather than currents) to the devices in the crossbar array to perform switching (i.e. writing operation).

Applications

• Solid state memory devices 
• Mobile communication 
• Computer systems 
• Medical implants and sensors

Advantages

• Does not require the flow of currents of any form to switch the bits 
• Higher density

Patent Status