State-Holding Spintronic Logic: From Current-Based Switching to Voltage-Driven Operation

With semiconductor technology scaling approaching atomic limits, novel materials and physical phenomena are sought in order to realize new logic and memory devices. Spintronic devices offer intriguing avenues to improve digital circuits by leveraging nonvolatility to reduce static power dissipation and enable logic-in-memory approaches to computing. Novel hybrid spintronic-CMOS digital circuits are developed herein that illustrate enhanced functionality at reduced area cost. The developed spin-CMOS D Flip-Flop offers improved power-gating strategies by achieving instant store/restore capabilities while using 10 fewer transistors than typical CMOS-only implementations. The spin-CMOS Muller C-Element developed herein improves asynchronous pipelines by reducing the area overhead while adding enhanced functionality such as instant data store/restore and delay-element-free bundled data asynchronous pipelines. However, the static-current-based operation of contemporary spintronic devices is a great challenge towards realizing energy-efficient circuits. STATE-HOLDING SPINTRONIC LOGIC: FROM CURRENT-BASED SWITCHING TO VOLTAGE-DRIVEN OPERATION