A Diode-Enhanced Scheme for Giant Magnetoresistance Amplification and Reconfigurable Logic

Abstract

Magnetoresistance (MR) effects have been intensively investigated and widely recognized as an effective path for realizing information sensing, storage, and processing. In particular, giant MR (GMR) effect discovered in ferromagnetic/nonmagnetic multilayers or junctions exhibits high magnetic-field sensitivity and has been successfully applied in magnetic sensors and hard disk drive (HDD) read heads. However, the relatively small MR ratio becomes the Achilles' Heel for its further application in high-reliability electronic systems. In this paper, we propose a scheme to amplify the GMR effect of a multilayer strip by utilizing the nonlinear transport property of a diode. MR ratio up to 6947% is obtained with a magnetic field as small as 50 Oe. A theoretical model is established to describe the amplification behavior and various factors influencing MR ratio are experimentally analyzed. Based on this scheme, reliable logic functions have been carried out, which can be reconfigured by changing the working current. Our work can be extended to enhance the MR effect of any two-terminal MR device and has the potential to build emerging high-performance computing systems.

Keywords

• Diode-enhanced
• giant magnetoresistance
• magnetic multilayers
• reconfigurable logic
• spintronics