Toshiba makes mram breakthroughs
Toshiba has announced what is says are ‘important breakthroughs’ in key technologies for magnetoresistive random access memory (mram). According to the company, it has successfully fabricated an mram cell integrating the new technologies and verified its stable performance.
In particular, Toshiba has appliced two technologies: spin transfer switching and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). With spin transfer switching, the properties of electron spin are used to invert magnetisation and to write data at low power levels. PMA allows the magnetisation in the magnetic layer to be aligned perpendicularly, either upward or downward, rather than horizontally.
Toshiba has optimised the materials and structure of the new mram and says close observation of its performance confirms stable operation.
MRAM is a highly anticipated next-generation non-volatile semiconductor memory device that offers fast random write/access speeds, enhances endurance in operation with very low power consumption. MRAM can theoretically achieve high level integration as the memory cell structure is relatively simple.
