Design and fabrication of a perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction based nonvolatile programmable switch achieving...

Area of Science:

• Integrated circuit design
• Spintronics
• Semiconductor device fabrication

Background:

• Field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) traditionally consume standby power.
• Nonvolatile programmable switches (NVPS) offer a solution for zero-standby-power applications.
• Perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (p-MTJ) devices are promising for nonvolatile memory and logic integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To fabricate a compact NVPS using 90nm CMOS and p-MTJ devices.
• To achieve zero-standby-power for FPGAs.
• To simplify the NVPS structure and reduce its effective area.

Main Methods:

• Fabrication of a novel NVPS integrating 90nm CMOS technology with p-MTJ devices.
• Design simplification by sharing a write-control transistor among NVPSs.
• Demonstration of instant on/off behavior using a fabricated test chip.

Main Results:

• A compact NVPS with a 40% reduced effective area compared to conventional MTJ-based NVPS.
• Simplified NVPS structure due to shared write-control transistor.
• Successful demonstration of instant on/off functionality without external nonvolatile memory access.

Conclusions:

• The fabricated NVPS is suitable for zero-standby-power FPGAs.
• The proposed design offers significant area reduction and structural simplification.
• The instant on/off capability highlights the potential for energy-efficient electronic systems.