Tailoring skyrmion motion dynamics via magnetoelectric coupling: Toward highly energy-efficient and reliable non-volatile memory applications

Abstract

Owing to the intriguing physical properties and significant spintronic applications, magnetic skyrmions have recently drawn intensive attention. Particularly, the skyrmion-based non-volatile memory (Sky-NVM) devices promise to be spintronic building blocks with high efficiency. However, tailoring Sky-NVM to achieve an energy-efficient and reliable operation in a synthetic, CMOS compatible, and magnetic-field-free integration is a challenging issue. Here, we report a new type of compact Sky-NVM with tailored skyrmion motion dynamics via in-plane strain gradient engineering. The skyrmion motion is merely driven by an in-plane electric field utilizing the magnetoelectric coupling effect, and the programmable switching is realized by gate biasing the potential barrier height via a voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy. The proposed device is CMOS process compatible, and the comprehensive micromagnetic simulation results demonstrate that by applying a 0.3 V in-plane voltage combined with −0.17 V gate voltage, its write latency and the energy consumption reach 5.85 ns and 4.77 aJ/bit, respectively, superior to the state-of-the-art counterparts. Our work paves a new path toward ultra-low-power spintronic memory devices.