SKM 2021 – scientific programme

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KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur

KFM 6: Skyrmions I (joint session MA/KFM)

KFM 6.10: Talk

Wednesday, September 29, 2021, 12:30–12:45, H5

Application of Thermal and Induced Skyrmion Diffusion in Non-Conventional Computing — •Maarten A. Brems, Mathias Kläui, and Peter Virnau — Institute of Physics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, 55099 Mainz, Germany

Magnetic skyrmions are two-dimensional magnetic quasi-particles with interesting properties for possible future applications in memory storage devices and non-conventional computing. We have shown that skyrmions in thin film magnetic multilayers exhibit thermal diffusion [1]. These properties make skyrmions promising candidates for signal carriers (tokens) in Brownian computing, which exploits thermal fluctuation for computations. We design a crossing-free layout for a composite half-adder module to overcome the problem that crossings generate for the fabrication of circuits [2]. To address the key issue of slow computation based on thermal excitations, we propose to combine artificial diffusion induced by an external excitation mechanism [2,3]. For magnetic skyrmions, induced diffusion by spin-orbit torques or other mechanisms can increase the computation speed by several orders of magnitude. This method can be employed to accelerate conventional Brownian computing as necessary and thereby greatly enhance the application scenarios of token-based computing for instance for low power devices such as autonomous sensors.

[1] J. Zázvorka et al., Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 658 (2019). [2] M. A. Brems, P. Virnau and M. Kläui, ArXiv: 2107.02097 [Cond-Mat] (2021). [3] M. A. Brems, P. Virnau and M. Kläui, European patent disclosure, EP21164676.5 (2021).