SBIR Phase I: All-Metal Giant Magnetoresistive Memory

这个小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目将开发基于巨磁电阻(GMR)的全金属支持电子产品，用于纳米级、非易失性、固态随机存取存储器。由于半导体规模的固有限制以及全金属技术所需的掩蔽步骤较少，单独或与GMR存储元件结合使用的硅技术既无法与全金属存储的密度或低成本相匹配，也无法与全金属存储相比。只有全金属固态存储(GMR存储器和GMR电路的结合)才能充分发挥磁电子芯片的潜力。该提案的通用电子设备的核心是一种名为TRANSPNOR(TM)的新型多功能GMR设备。研究目标是在全金属芯片上开发和演示基于TRANSPNOR的电路。本研究将设计巨磁电阻元件，在电路上对它们的耦合进行建模和仿真，制作和测试基于巨磁电阻的选择和读出电路，并设计一个完整的1kbit全金属磁存储芯片。结果预计将展示集成芯片上GMR电路的功能。全金属固态芯片的潜在市场不仅包括SRAM、DRAM和Flash等半导体存储器，还包括机械存储和通用电子产品。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop all-metal support electronics that are based on giant magnetoresistance (GMR) for a nanoscale, nonvolatile, solid-state random-access memory. Silicon technology, alone or in combination with GMR memory elements, cannot match either the density or low cost of all-metal memory because of inherent limits on scaling of semiconductors and because of the fewer masking steps required for all-metal technology. Only all-metal solid-state storage (the combination of GMR memory and GMR circuitry) can realize the full potential of magnetoelectronic chips. At the heart of the proposal's general-purpose electronics is a novel multifunctional GMR device called a transpinnor (TM). The research objectives are to develop and demonstrate transpinnor-based circuitry on the all-metal chip. The research will design the GMR elements, model and simulate their coupling on the circuit, fabricate and test GMR based selection and sense circuitry, and design a complete 1 Kbit all-metal magnetic memory chip. The results are anticipated to demonstrate functionality of GMR circuitry on an integrated chip.The addressable markets for all-metal solid-state chips include not only semiconductor memories such as SRAM, DRAM and Flash, but mechanical storage and general-purpose electronics as well.