May 2020

Researchers from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) have managed to drastically incraese the speed of MRAM devices while reducing the power consumption by adding a layer of yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) to MRAM devices.

The YSZ layer, which has high ion conductivity helps inject hydrogen ions into the MRAM cell. This resulted in an increase in the speed of the spin alignment direction changes 100-fold.

This is a sponsored post by Integral Solutions Int'l

MRAM is likely to be the most promising next-generation non-volatile memory technology today. Toggle MRAM and STT-MRAM are already entering the market, gaining market share in many applications. Next-generation MRAM technologies, such as SOT-MRAM could enable the replacement of even the fastest SRAM applications, with higher densities.

Source: Coughlin Associates, 2019

The MRAM production process has many stages, as device architecture is relatively complex, with a magnetic cell (frontplane) fabricated on top of a CMOS backplane. (use Figure 2 or Figure 3 from Coughlin). Measurement and characterization of devices are highly important, and the production of MRAM memories depend on measurement tools are are specialized for MRAM and STT-MRAM measurements.

Researchers from the University of Arizona discovered that in common Magnetic Tunnel Junctions (MTJ), there's a thin (2D) layer of Iron Oxide. This layer was found to act as a contaminant which lowers the performance achieved by MTJs, but it may also hold the key to use antiferromagnetism in MRAM devices.

The researchers discovered that the layer behaves as a so-called antiferromagnet at extremely cold temperatures (below -245 degrees Celsius). Antiferromagnets are promising as these can be manipulated at Terahertz frequencies, about 1,000 times faster than existing, silicon-based technology. This is the first research that shows how Antiferromagnets can be controlled as part of MTJs and in the future may pave the way for its adoption in MRAM devices.

Everspin Technologies announced its Q1 2020 financial results, - with revenues of $10.1 million, up from $9.7 million in Q4 2019 and $10 million in Q1 2019. Net loss was $1.7 million, down from $3.1 million in Q4 2019. Everspin expects the growth to continue in Q2 2020 as demand from data center applications continues to be positive.

At the end of the quarter, Everspin had $14 million in cash and equivalents.