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An all-electrical magnetic logic gate that harnesses chirality between domains

Bits of a logic gate can be encoded by differently magnetized regions. A method has been developed in which the walls between these domains are manipulated electrically, rather than magnetically, to produce a logic gate.
  1. See-Hun Yang

    1. See-Hun Yang is at IBM Research – Almaden, San Jose, California 95120, USA.

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Computer logic based on standard electronic components is expected to hit its speed and power limits before long. To get around this, logic devices that use magnetic elements, rather than electronic ones, have been proposed — but these usually require external magnetic fields, which limits their application. A working logic gate that uses magnetic elements and is driven completely electrically, without the need for an external magnetic field, has yet to be demonstrated1. However, in a paper in Nature, Luo et al.2 report that they have harnessed the chirality (‘handedness’) of a system to invert the direction of magnetization of domains in a cobalt wire purely by means of an electric current. The resulting inverter device acts as a ‘NOT’ gate, which they use to build up other logic gates such as NAND and NOR.

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Nature 579, 201-202 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-00635-y

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