- Researchers in Germany and France have built a smarter, greener memory technology for units
- This new sot-mram memory cuts energy consumption by 50%while increasing efficiency
- It ditches rare metals, making storage cheaper, faster and more sustainable
A research team at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in Mainz, Germany, has collaborated with Antaios, a French company that focuses on magnetic memory, to develop an energy -efficient memory technology that can cut power consumption in data storage.
Progress, based on spin-orbit turning torque (soot) magnetically random access memory (MRAM), could potentially offer improved efficiency for a variety of smart devices, from smartphones to supercomputers.
This breakthrough comes almost a year after the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), and TSMC announced their own SOT-MRAM array chip described as cache, system memory and storage rolled into one.
Orbital Hall Effect
SOT-MRAM is considered a promising alternative to static ram due to its lower energy consumption and non-volatile nature. Unlike traditional memory, it uses electrical currents to change magnetic conditions, enabling reliable data storage. Reducing the high input current required to write data while ensuring that compatibility with industrial applications has been a challenge so that the team at JGU developed a magnetic material that incorporated ruthenium as the sot channel, addressing these problems and improved performance .
Dr. Rahul Gupta, a former postal doctoral researcher at the JGU Institute of Physics and the lead author of the new study said: “This prototype is unique and could revolutionize data storage and processing. It is not only in line with global goals to reduce energy consumption, but also paving the way for faster and more efficient storage solutions.
The technology reduces energy consumption by over 50%, increases efficiency by 30%, reduces the input flow by 20%and ensures data storage for over ten years, the team claims.
The research is dependent on the Orbital Hall effect, which allows for higher energy efficiency without depending on rare or expensive materials. Traditional SOT-MRAM is dependent on the spin hall effect, which requires elements with strong spin-orbit coupling, such as platinum and tungsten.
“In contrast, our approach benefits from a new basic phenomenon by using orbital streams derived from charging currents through the Orbital Hall power, eliminating the dependence of expensive and rare materials,” Gupta said.
The study entitled “Harnessing Orbital Hall Effect in Spin-ORBIT Moment Mram” was published in Nature Communication.
