The Regents of The University of California Assigned Patent

The Regents of The University of California, Oakland, CA, has been assigned a patent (11,342,500) developed by Analytis, James G., San Francisco, CA, Maniv, Eran, Nair, Nityan L., Berkeley, CA, Doyle, Spencer, San Luis Obispo, CA, and John, Caolan, Altadena, CA, for “antiferromagnetic memory storage devices from magnetic transition metal dichalcogenides.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “Switchable antiferromagnetic (AFM) memory devices are provided based on magnetically intercalated transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) of the form A.sub.xMC.sub.2, where A is a magnetic element of stoichiometry x between 0 and 1, M is a transition metal of stoichiometry 1, and C is a chalcogen of stoichiometry 2. Memory storage is achieved by fabricating these materials into crosses of two or more bars and driving DC current pulses along the bars to rotate the AFM order to a fixed angle with respect to the current pulse. Application of current pulses along different bars can switch the AFM order between multiple directions. Standard resistance measurements can detect the orientation of the AFM order as high or low resistance states. The state of the device can be set by the input current pulses, and read-out by the resistance measurement, forming a non-volatile, AFM memory storage bit.”

The patent application was filed on July 24, 2020 (16/938,089).