Magneto-electric spin-orbit (MESO) is a technology designed for constructing scalable

integrated circuit An integrated circuit (IC), also known as a microchip or simply chip, is a set of electronic circuits, consisting of various electronic components (such as transistors, resistors, and capacitors) and their interconnections. These components a ...

s, that works with a different operating principle than CMOS devices such as MOSFETs, proposed by

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

, that is compatible with CMOS device manufacturing techniques and machinery. MESO devices operate by the coupling of the

magnetoelectric effect In its most general form, the magnetoelectric effect (ME) denotes any coupling between the magnetic and the electric properties of a material. The first example of such an effect was described by Wilhelm Röntgen in 1888, who found that a dielectri ...

with the spin orbit coupling. Specifically, the magnetoelectric effect will induce a change in

magnetization In classical electromagnetism, magnetization is the vector field that expresses the density of permanent or induced magnetic dipole moments in a magnetic material. Accordingly, physicists and engineers usually define magnetization as the quanti ...

within the device due to an induced electric field, which can then be read out by the spin orbit coupling component which converts it into an electric charge. This mechanism is analogous to how a

CMOS Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss ", , ) is a type of MOSFET, metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) semiconductor device fabrication, fabrication process that uses complementary an ...

device operates with the source, gate and drain electrodes working together to form a logic gate. As of 2020, the technology is under development by

and

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. The first experiment, conducted in 2020 in nanoGUNE, proved that spin-orbit coupling could be used for implementing MESO.

Performance

Before the introduction of MESO, Intel evaluated 17 different device architectures for beyond CMOS scaling which aims to circumvent scaling challenges present with CMOS devices such as

MOSFET upright=1.3, Two power MOSFETs in amperes">A in the ''on'' state, dissipating up to about 100 watt">W and controlling a load of over 2000 W. A matchstick is pictured for scale. In electronics, the metal–oxide–semiconductor field- ...

s used in integrated circuits. For testing, these architectures were made with production processes compatible with those used for CMOS devices since some CMOS devices are still necessary for interfacing with other circuits and for providing the clock signal for an integrated circuit, and for reusing existing production equipment: Tunneling FETs, graphene p-n junctions, ITFETs, BisFET, spinFETs, all spin logic, spin torque oscillators, domain wall logic, spin torque majority, spin torque triad, spin wave device, nano magnet logic, charge spin logic, piezo FETs, MITFETs, FeFETs and negative capacitance FETs were tested and it was found that none offered both improved performance characteristics and lower power consumption compared with CMOS. According to

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, simulations showed that, on a 32-bit ALU, MESO devices offer both higher performance (processing speed in TOPS per cm²) and lower power density than CMOS HP devices, which had the highest performance among all other devices except MESO. Compared to CMOS, MESO circuits can require less energy for switching, can have a lower operating voltage, feature a higher integration density, possess non-volatility which allows for ultra low standby power consumption, and the energy required to switch MESO devices scales down cubically with every miniaturization by a factor of two of the device. These features make MESO attractive for replacing CMOS devices in the design of future logic gates and circuits in integrated circuits as it can help increase their performance and lower their power consumption. There is a huge challenge in the ME writing processes regarding the necessary materials. In recent years, great efforts are being made in the scientific community in order to make the magnetoelectric effects work in nanostructure (thin film). The main issue is that, when ferroelectric material transfers to thinfilm, it loses its FE properties, making it even more difficult to achieve a high efficiency-coupling of FE-FM (ME) at nanometer-size systems.

References

{{cite book , doi=10.1109/IEDM19573.2019.8993620 , year=2019 , last1=Lin , first1=Chia-Ching , last2= Gosavi , first2=Tanay , last3=Nikonov , first3=Dmitri E. , last4=Huang , first4=Yen-Lin , last5=Prasad , first5=Bhagwati , last6=Choi , first6=WonYoung , last7=Pham , first7=Van Tuong , last8=Groen , first8=Inge , last9=Chen , first9=Jun-Yang , last10=DC , first10=Mahendra , last11=Liu , first11=Huichu , last12=Oguz , first12=Kaan , last13=Walker , first13=Emily S , last14=Plombon , first14=John , last15=Buford , first15=Benjamin , last16=Naylor , first16=Carl H. , last17=Wang , first17=Jian-Ping , last18=Casanova , first18=Felix , last19=Ramesh , first19=Ramamoorthy , last20=Young , first20=Ian A. , title=2019 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) , chapter=Experimental demonstration of integrated magneto-electric and spin-orbit building blocks implementing energy-efficient logic , pages=37.3.1–37.3.4 , isbn=978-1-7281-4032-2 , s2cid=211210115 Spintronics