MAGWIRE: Magnetic Nanowires for High Density Non Volatile Memories

Fast, high capacity, low factor and low power non-volatile memories are a crucial enabler of today’s ICT. They are already an important part of all electronic systems, representing a growing market segment, and should increase their importance in the future en route towards the «Storage everywhere» society. The market today is divided between Flash NAND and hard disk, which both face severe limitations for the mid term future (2012-2014). The recent discovery that domain walls (DWs) can be moved under a smaller current without any magnetic field opens a perspective for a paradigmshift a mass storage design.

This project aims at demonstrating the disruptive concept of the race track memory which proposes to store information in DW sequences moving synchronously under current in patterned magnetic tracks. It reproduces the successful data sector memory organization of a hard disk in a solid state device with no mechanically moving parts.

Our objective is to investigate the potential of a race track storage device beyond the 32nm technology node by proposing innovative solutions in the fields of materials, DW spin structure engineering, fabrication processes, architecture and CMOS integration.

FP7 ICT Collaborative project; GA number 257707; Starting date: October, 1st 2010; Project duration: 3 years