December 2020

2020 is soon over - and many in the world are really happy about that and hope that 2021 will bring the COVID-19 pandemic to an end. The entire world was effected, including the MRAM industry, although it seems as if the fast pace of research and development continues.

Here are the top 10 stories posted on MRAM-Info in 2020, ranked by popularity (i.e. how many people read the story):

1. Antiferromagnetic STT-MRAM technology enables efficient and dense memory (Feb 21)
2. GlobalFoundries starts producing eMRAM solutions (Feb 29)
3. Hprobe raises over 2 million Euros (Feb 6)
4. Everspin reports its Q4 2019 financial results (Mar 13)
5. Everspin and Globalfoundries extend their MRAM agreement to 12 nm (Mar 12)
6. Chalcogenide materials can be highly suitable for SOT-MRAM (Feb 18)
7. Everspin announced a restructuring plan to reduced expense (Jan 16)
8. Researchers identify the semimetal MoTe2 as a promising MRAM material (Feb 6)
9. Avalanche's Serial P-SRAM STT-MRAM memory devices are now shipping (Sep 29)
10. New research may hold the key towards antiferromagnetic MRAM (May 13)

On December 15, Everspin Technologies announced that its CEO and President Kevin Conley has resigned. Conley served as CEO in 2017. The company's Chairman Darin Billerbeck will become interim CEO.

Everspin also lowered its guidance for Q4 2020 slightly - from $10.1-$10.9 million to $10.1-$10.5 million. Investors were not pleased and yesterday the stock declined 16%.

IBM announced that during the 2020 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM 2020), that is now being held virtually, its researchers will reveal the first 14 nm node STT-MRAM. IBM says that efficient and high-performance STT-MRAM systems will help to address memory-compute bottlenecks in hybrid cloud systems.

IBM says that the 14 nm node embedded MRAM which will be revealed is the most advanced MRAM demonstrated to date. It features circuit design and process technology that could soon enable system designers to replace SRAM with twice the amount of MRAM in last-level CPU cache.

Researchers from Seoul's National University and Pohang's University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) report that a 2D iron germanium telluride (Fe₃GeTe₂, or FGT) layer is an excellent candidate to be used as the basis SOT-MRAM material.

An SOT-MRAM based on FGT is highly energy-efficient, in fact the researchers say that the measured magnitude of SOT per applied current density is two orders of magnitude larger than the values reported previously for other candidate materials.

Researchers from Tohoku University say they have developed the world's smallest (2.3 nm) high-performance magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs).

The design is based on the Shape-anisotropy MTJ (developed by the same researchers in 2018) in which thermal stability is enhanced by making the ferromagnetic layer thick. In this new research, the scientists used a new structure that uses magnetostatically coupled multilayered ferromagnets - which enabled the scaling down to 2.3 nm diameters.