High-Speed, Low-Power, Magnetic Non-Volatile Flip-Flop With Voltage-Controlled, Magnetic Anisotropy Assistance

Abstract

A magnetic non-volatile flip-flop (MNV-FF) design, with the assistance of voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effect, is proposed for low-power and high-speed applications. The MNV-FF employs perpendicular-anisotropy magnetic junnel junctions (MTJs) and exploits the VCMA effect for assisting data backup operations, in cooperation with either spin-transfer torque (STT) or spin-Hall effect (SHE). Thanks to the VCMA assistance, the required STT or SHE current density and pulse duration can be greatly reduced for MTJ switching, resulting in faster and more energy-efficient operations. Our simulation results show that the proposed VCMA-assisted MNV-FFs can achieve 98.4% and 74.6% improvement in data backup energy, and 89.5% and 19.0% improvement in data backup delay, compared to conventional STTand SHE-based MNV-FFs, respectively.