Product category:
IC and Hybrid Processing Equipment
News Release from: Hitachi Europe
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 10 August 2006
Magnetoresitive effect could boost
storage density
Researchers have demonstrated a novel effect, called coulomb blockade anisotropic magnetoresistance, that points to new classes of nonvolatile logic circuits.
A team of researchers from Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, the Czech Institute of Physics, the Universities of Cambridge and Nottingham have demonstrated a novel effect, called coulomb blockade anisotropic magnetoresistance (CBAMR) CBAMR allows voltage control of this magnetoresitive effect and therefore the development of nonvolatile logic circuits
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 16 Feb 2001 at 8.00am (UK)
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To generate this effect the team has created a simple device made of a single ferromagnetic material which demonstrates the first magnetic transistor with more than three orders of magnitude resistance change between "on" and "off" state.
The simplicity of the device, the additional functionality, the magnitude of the effect, and its miniscule dimensions may have great potential in magnetic sensor, memory and logic chip technologies, such as computer hard-drive read heads or magnetic random access memories and CPUs.
Although this first CBAMR-device works only at low temperatures the research team has shown that CBAMR is a generic effect which persists to high temperatures in devices made from metal ferromagnets with strong spin-orbit coupling.
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The work has established the large magnitude of the CBAMR effect and the relationship between this novel phenomenon, discovered only within the last year, and the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) effect.
These nano-devices therefore combine the simplicity of the early magnetic storage devices based on the AMR, the high sensitivity of current giant-magnetoresistance devices that require a complicated multilayer design, and prospects for the spintronics industry of downscaling its active parts to several nanometres, needed for terabit-per-square-inch technology.
There is an ever-growing demand for increased hard disk drive (HDD) storage capacity.
In 2005, over 350 million HDD units were shipped worldwide.
The drives are also being used in new applications, such as consumer electronic devices.
The digital video recorder (DVR) is creating demand for HDDs with capacities of several terabytes.
Fulfilling this demand poses tremendous challenges for future hard disk technology.
To realise terabit-per-square-inch densities, the bit sizes and sensor sizes must be of the order of 10nm.
At these dimensions, issues such as magnetic noise become dominant.
Hitachi is one of the largest manufacturers of hard disk drives for information storage.
The Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory is part of a global collaboration within Hitachi, aimed at developing new spintronic devices for future hard disk and memory applications.
Projects under investigation include the study of fundamental spintronic physics, and the production of devices more specifically aimed at making new read head sensors and novel methods of magnetic storage.
In a parallel development, a team from Hitachi and Cambridge University have also announced the development of the first silicon-technology embodiment of the effect called extraordinary magnetoresistance (EMR).
This is a promising candidate for read-head sensors which do not have the problem of magnetic noise.
Dr David Williams, Laboratory Manager and Senior Researcher at Hitachi's Cambridge Laboratory said: "Given the sheer size of the global hard disk drive market and its growth potential this is an important development that could lead to new read back sensor technology".
"This is an exciting breakthrough that underlines the team's expertise in combining nanotechnology and spintronics to achieve rapid progress in this field".
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