关键词: 磁电耦合/
非易失性存储/
忆耦器/
电耦
English Abstract
Fundamental circuit element and nonvolatile memory based on magnetoelectric effect
Shen Jian-Xin1,2,Shang Da-Shan1,
Sun Young1,2
1.Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China;
2.School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
Fund Project:Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11534015, 51671213, 51725104), the National Key RD Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFA0300701), and the Strategic Priority Research Program (B) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. XDB07030200).Received Date:17 April 2018
Accepted Date:26 April 2018
Published Online:20 June 2019
Abstract:The magnetoelectric coupling effect in materials provides an additional degree of freedom of physical states for information storage and shows great potential in developing a new generation of memory devices. We use an alternative concept of nonvolatile memory based on a type of nonlinear magnetoelectric effects showing a butterfly-shaped hysteresis loop. The state of magnetoelectric coefficient, instead of magnetization, electric polarization, or resistance, is utilized to store information. Because this memory concept depends on the relationship between the charge and magnetic flux, it is actually the fourth fundamental circuit memory element in addition to memristor, memcapacitor, and meminductor, and is defined as memtranstor. Our experiments in memtranstor comprised of the[Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)]0.7[PbTiO3]0.3(PMN-PT)/Terfenol-D and Ni/PMN-PT/Ni multiferroic heterostructures clearly demonstrated that the magnetoelectric coefficient can be repeatedly switched not only between positive and negative polarities but also between multilevel states by applying electric fields, confirming the feasibility of this principle. In addition to nonvolatile memory, the nonvolatile logic functions, such as NOR and NAND and synaptic plasticity functions, such as long-term potentiation/depression and spiking-time-dependent plasticity are implemented in a single memtranstor by engineering the applied electric-field pulses. The combined functionalities of memory, logic, and synaptic plasticity enable the memtranstor to serve as a promising candidate for future computing systems beyond von Neumann architecture.
Keywords: magnetoelectrics/
nonvolatile memory/
memtranstor/
transtor
