Voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy-based spintronic devices for magnetic memory applications: Challenges and perspectives

Abstract

Electronic spins provide an additional degree of freedom that can be used in modern spin-based electronic devices. Some benefits of spintronic devices include nonvolatility, energy efficiency, high endurance, and CMOS compatibility, which can be leveraged for data processing and storage applications in today's digital era. To implement such functionalities, controlling and manipulating electron spins is of prime interest. One of the efficient ways of achieving this in spintronics is to use the electric field to control electron spin or magnetism through the voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effect. VCMA avoids the movement of charges and significantly reduces the Ohmic loss. This article reviews VCMA-based spintronic devices for magnetic memory applications. First, we briefly discuss the VCMA effect and various mechanisms explaining its physical origin. We then mention various challenges in VCMA that impede it for practical VCMA-based magnetic memory. We review various techniques to address them, such as field-free switching operation, write error rate improvement, widening the operation window, enhancing the VCMA coefficient, and ensuring fast-read operation with low read disturbance. Finally, we draw conclusions outlining the future perspectives.