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Chain of magnetic tunnel junctions as a spintronic memristor

2018; American Institute of Physics; Volume: 124; Issue: 15 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1063/1.5042431

1520-8850

Eline Raymenants, Adrien Vaysset, Danny Wan, Mauricio Manfrini, Odysseas Zografos, Olivier Bultynck, Jonas Doevenspeck, Marc Heyns, Iuliana Radu, T. Devolder,

Transition Metal Oxide Nanomaterials

In the context of neuromorphic computation, spintronic memristors are investigated for their use as synaptic weights. In this paper, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a resistive synaptic device based on ten magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) connected in a serial configuration. Our device exhibits multiple resistance levels that support its use as a synaptic element. It allows for two operating knobs: external magnetic field and voltage pulses (Spin-Transfer Torque). Moreover, it can be operated in different ways. When varying continuously the amplitude of the voltage pulse and/or the magnetic field, eleven resistance states can be reached. In contrast, if the initial state of the chain is reset between every step, a very large number of levels are reached. Ideally, a total of 2N resistance levels could be accessible. This coincides well with the desired analog-like behavior in ideal memristors. Since this device consists of a scalable number of N MTJs, and MTJ technology is continuously optimized and improved, the proposed memristor shows promise as a scalable synapse solution for neuromorphic hardware implementations.