SBIR Phase II: Electric-Field-Controlled Nonvolatile Magnetic Memory

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in addressing the novel hardware challenges of energy and speed associated with big data applications. The electronics industry is quickly transforming from a compute-centric model to a data-centric model, where the key to success in the market place is the ability to store, manipulate and access large amounts of data in a fast and energy-efficient manner. The existing memory technologies cannot meet these challenges. This changing landscape offers a major potential for emerging memory technologies that can successfully address these new emerging demands. The Electric-Field-Controlled Nonvolatile Magnetic Memory technology developed under this project offers the most viable low-cost, low-power, and high-endurance solution to these new demands. Conservative estimates project a rapid growth in the emerging memory technologies market, reaching $2B in 2018. We expect that Electric-Field-Controlled Nonvolatile Magnetic Memory will be able to capture a significant part of this emerging market. More broadly, it can be used in many general computing and information processing systems, and hence it can potentially impact a major part of the $300B semiconductors industry by enabling ultra-low power green and instant-on electronic systems. This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project will focus on the development of prototype Electric-Field-Controlled Nonvolatile Magnetic Memory chips and arrays. This memory technology uses a fundamentally new way to write information into the nonvolatile memory bits, providing major advantages in terms of power dissipation, cost, density, and scalability. This project will result in chip prototypes, providing significant advantages in terms of energy efficiency, density, and scalability when compared to alternative existing or emerging memory technologies. They also provide virtually unlimited endurance. Circuit design for memory product development will also be performed, as well as modeling in support of circuit development and device optimization.