Complementary Lateral-Spin-Orbit Building Blocks for Programmable Logic and In-Memory Computing

Zhang, Nan; Cao, Yi; Li, Yucai; Rushforth, Andrew W.; Ji, Yang; Zheng, Houzhi; Wang, Kaiyou

Abstract

Current-driven switching of nonvolatile spintronic materials and devices based on spin–orbit torques offer fast data processing speed, low power consumption, and unlimited endurance for future information processing applications. Analogous to conventional complementary metal-oxide-semiconductors technology, it is important to develop complementary spin–orbit devices with differentiated magnetization switching senses as elementary building blocks for realizing sophisticated logic functionalities. Various attempts using external magnetic field or complicated stack/circuit designs have been proposed; however, plainer and more feasible approaches are still strongly desired. Here it is shown that a pair of two locally laser annealed perpendicular Pt/Co/Pt devices with opposite laser track configurations and thereby inverse field-free lateral spin–orbit torques (LSOTs) induced switching senses can be adopted as such complementary spin–orbit building blocks. By electrically programming the initial magnetization states (spin down/up) of each sample, Boolean logic gates of AND, OR, NAND, and NOR as well as a spin–orbit half adder containing an exclusive-OR gate are obtained. Moreover, various initialization-free programmable stateful logic operations, including material implication gate, are also demonstrated by regarding the magnetization state as a logic input. The complementary LSOT building blocks provide a potentially applicable way toward future efficient spin logics and in-memory computing architectures.

Citation

Zhang, N., Cao, Y., Li, Y., Rushforth, A. W., Ji, Y., Zheng, H., & Wang, K. (2020). Complementary Lateral-Spin-Orbit Building Blocks for Programmable Logic and In-Memory Computing. Advanced Electronic Materials, 6(8), Article 2000296. https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202000296

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 26, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Jul 19, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-08
• Deposit Date: Jun 16, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Jul 20, 2021
• Journal: Advanced Electronic Materials
• Electronic ISSN: 2199-160X
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 8
• Article Number: 2000296
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202000296
• Keywords: current-driven magnetization switching; in-memory computing; lateral spin-orbit torque (LSOT); spin-orbit logic; stateful logic
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4659555
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/aelm.202000296
• Additional Information: This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Zhang, N., Cao, Y., Li, Y., Rushforth, A., Ji, Y., Zheng, H., & Wang, K. (2020). Complementary Lateral-Spin-Orbit Building Blocks for Programmable Logic and In-Memory Computing. Advanced Electronic Materials, https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202000296, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202000296. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.