Advances and Future Prospects of Spin-Transfer Torque Random Access Memory

Author

Chen, E. ; Apalkov, D. ; Diao, Z. ; Driskill-Smith, A. ; Druist, D. ; Lottis, D. ; Nikitin, V. ; Tang, X. ; Watts, S. ; Wang, S. ; Wolf, S.A. ; Ghosh, A.W. ; Lu, J.W. ; Poon, S.J. ; Stan, M. ; Butler, W.H. ; Gupta, S. ; Mewes, C.K.A. ; Mewes, Tim ; Vissch

Author_Institution

Grandis Inc., Milpitas, CA, USA

Volume

46

Issue

6

fYear

2010

fDate

6/1/2010 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1873

Lastpage

1878

Abstract

Spin-transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM) is a potentially revolutionary universal memory technology that combines the capacity and cost benefits of DRAM, the fast read and write performance of SRAM, the non-volatility of Flash, and essentially unlimited endurance. In order to realize a small cell size, high speed and achieve a fully functional STT-RAM chip, the MgO-barrier magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) used as the core storage and readout element must meet a set of performance requirements on switching current density, voltage, magneto-resistance ratio (MR), resistance-area product (RA), thermal stability factor (Â¿) , switching current distribution, read resistance distribution and reliability. In this paper, we report the progress of our work on device design, material improvement, wafer processing, integration with CMOS, and testing for a demonstration STT-RAM test chip, and projections based on modeling of the future characteristics of STT-RAM.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; random-access storage; CMOS integration; device design; material improvement; spin-transfer torque random access memory; wafer processing; Current density; Magnetic cores; Magnetic switching; Magnetic tunneling; Materials testing; Random access memory; Read-write memory; Thermal resistance; Torque; Voltage; Magnetic tunnel junction; magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM); spin torque; spin transfer switching; spin transfer torque random access memory (STT-RAM);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMAG.2010.2042041

Filename

5467394