Northwestern University Assigned Patent

Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, has been assigned a patent (11,367,474) developed by Amiri, Pedram Khalili, Chicago, IL, for “electric-field-induced switching of antiferromagnetic memory devices.“

The abstract of the patent published by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office states: “A new type of two-terminal magnetic memory device, referred to as antiferromagnetic voltage-controlled memory (AVM) device is disclosed. Antiferromagnetic (AFM) materials have zero magnetization, which makes it immune to external magnetic fields and opens to the possibility to implement high-density arrays without dipole coupling between adjacent devices. The AVM device combines a new state variable e.g., Neel vector l in a metallic (or non-metallic) AFM material with an electric-field-induced switching mechanism for writing of information. Utilizing electric fields E via an interfacial voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effect is a more efficient writing mechanism. The AVM device implements an antiferromagnetic tunnel junction (AFM-TJ) structure to exhibit high or low resistance states (HR, LR) corresponding to binary logic states of zero (0) or one (1). Both the AVM device structure and methods of writing a signal to the AVM device are disclosed.”

The patent application was filed on July 17, 2019 (17/260,113).