Low Power Logic Operations through Pure Spin Currents

通过纯自旋电流进行低功耗逻辑运算

• 批准号: RGPIN-2017-04178
• 负责人: miao, guoxing
• 金额: $ 2.04万
• 依托单位: University of Waterloo
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2017-01-01 至 2018-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=637075
• 关键词: Low; Power; Logic; Operations; through

The concept of spin-based electronics has reached a stage where it is making transformational changes in advanced science and high-efficiency technology, such as magnetoresistance field sensors, hard disk drive and magnetic random access memory. A spin is an innate quantum property of every electron, and it is already flowing within every electronic device but rarely harvested. By incorporating the spin degree of freedom into existing electronic devices such as central processing units (CPUs), they can gain novel functionalities compared to the present charge-based technologies. Furthermore, modern semiconductor electronics have reached a bottleneck in clock frequency, mainly because only limited heat dissipation is achievable. For example, Intel CPUs reached 3GHz speed a decade ago, yet has been stalled at this level ever since (while using multicore solutions) due to the thermal dissipation limits at about 4GHz. This is termed the “power wall” — the defining limit to modern CPU processing power. In contrast, spintronic devices are inherently immune to this issue, i.e., they do not create Joule heating from the diffusive nature. Therefore, devices driven with pure spin currents offer far reduced power consumption than conventional electronic devices; however, spintronic devices present other technological challenges. The limited spin transfer efficiency into and across the channels is the most important, and a fundamental understanding of the spin transport processes through various media and interfaces is critical for further developing these devices.

自旋电子学的概念已经达到了一个阶段，它正在先进的科学和高效率的技术，如磁电阻场传感器，硬盘驱动器和磁性随机存取存储器的变革。自旋是每个电子固有的量子特性，它已经在每个电子设备中流动，但很少被捕获。通过将自旋自由度整合到现有的电子设备中，如中央处理器（cpu），与目前基于电荷的技术相比，它们可以获得新的功能。此外，现代半导体电子在时钟频率方面已经达到瓶颈，主要是因为只能实现有限的散热。例如，英特尔cpu在十年前达到了3GHz的速度，但由于散热限制在4GHz左右，此后一直停滞在这个水平（当使用多核解决方案时）。这就是所谓的“功率墙”——现代CPU处理能力的极限。相比之下，自旋电子器件本身就不受这个问题的影响，也就是说，它们不会产生来自扩散性质的焦耳加热。因此，纯自旋电流驱动的器件比传统电子器件的功耗低得多；然而，自旋电子器件提出了其他技术挑战。进入和跨越通道的有限自旋传输效率是最重要的，并且对通过各种介质和界面的自旋传输过程的基本理解对于进一步开发这些器件至关重要。