Benchmarking spintronic logic devices based on magnetoelectric oxides

Active research is ongoing in logic devices beyond complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor electronics. One of the most promising classes of such devices is spintronic/nanomagnetic devices. Switching of magnetization by spin torque (ST) demonstrated in spintronic devices results in relatively high switching energy. An attractive option for lowering switching energy is magnetoelectric (ME) switching achieved by placing other materials (mostly oxides) adjacent to ferromagnets. We review recent experiments on ME switching, classify them according to the ME phenomena into surface anisotropy, exchange bias, and magnetostrictive, and compare switching parameters for these classes. Then, we perform micromagnetic simulations of switching by the effective ME field of both stand-alone nanomagnets and spintronic interconnects. We determine the threshold values of ME field for switching and the resulting switching time. These switching requirements are incorporated into the previously developed benchmarking framework for spintronic logic devices and circuits. We conclude that ME switching results in 1 to 2 orders of magnitude improvement of switching energy and several time improvement of switching delay compared with ST switching across various schemes of spin logic devices.