Straintronics: Manipulating the Magnetization of Magnetostrictive Nanomagnets with Strain for Energy-Efficient Applications

Abstract

The desire to perform information processing, computation, communication, signal generation and related tasks, while dissipating as little energy as possible, has inspired many ideas and paradigms. One of the most powerful among them is the notion of using magnetostrictive nanomagnets as the primitive units of the hardware platforms and manipulating their magnetizations with electrically generated static or time varying mechanical strain to elicit myriad functionalities. This approach has two advantages. First, information can be retained in the devices after powering off since the nanomagnets are non-volatile unlike charge-based devices such as transistors. Second, the energy expended to perform a given task is exceptionally low since it takes very little energy to alter magnetization states with strain. This field is now known as "straintronics", in analogy with electronics, spintronics, valleytronics, etc. We review the recent advances and trends in straintronics, including digital information processing (logic), information storage (memory), domain wall devices operated with strain, control of skyrmions with strain, non-Boolean computing and machine learning with straintronics, signal generation (microwave sources) and communication (ultra-miniaturized acoustic and electromagnetic antennas) implemented with strained nanomagnets, hybrid straintronics-magnonics, and interaction between phonons and magnons in straintronic systems. We identify key challenges and opportunities, and lay out pathways to advance this field to the point where it might become a mainstream technology for energy-efficient systems.

Invited review article on straintronics

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Cited by in corpus (10)

• Quantum Control of Spin Qubits Using Nanomagnets
• Applications of Nanomagnets as Dynamical Systems
• Skyrmion-mediated Nonvolatile Ternary Memory
• Symmetry and nonlinearity of spin wave resonance excited by focused surface acoustic waves
• Controlling effective field contributions to laser-induced magnetization precession by heterostructure design
• Low power In Memory Computation with Reciprocal Ferromagnet/Topological Insulator Heterostructures
• Straintronic magnetic tunnel junctions for analog computation: A perspective
• Reduction of energy cost of magnetization switching in a biaxial nanoparticle by use of internal dynamics
• Strained topological insulator spin-orbit torque random access memory (STI-SOTRAM) bit cell for energy-efficient Processing in Memory
• Magnetism and magnetoelastic effect in 2D van der Waals multiferroic CuCrP2S6