Magnetic Full Adder Based on Negative Differential Resistance-Enhanced Anomalous Hall Effect

Spintronic logic devices have attracted attention because of the prospect of breaking the von Neumann bottleneck through nonvolatile in-memory computing. Although varieties of spin Boolean logic gates have been proposed, spintronic arithmetic logic units such as adders have not been extensively studied because of the difficulties in application of the cascade method of CMOS-based logic in spintronic devices. We experimentally demonstrated a spintronic full adder based on the anomalous Hall effect and geometrical tuning magnetization switching driven by spin-orbit torque. The anomalous Hall effect of magnetic bits was enhanced by nonlinear elements with N-type negative differential resistance to control the on/off state of mosfets, which determined the write voltage of the memory unit. The magnetizations of the memory bits in the memory unit were switched one by one as write voltage increased because of geometry difference. The order of magnetization switching caused the response of the anomalous Hall voltage of the memory unit to the input configurations to conform with the logic function of the full adder. The computation function of the full adder combined with memory writing was experimentally realized with only seven magnetic bits and two steps. The reduced number of magnetic bits and time steps indicated the efficiency of space and time of our device, which is beneficial for practical applications.

Automated summary

This study demonstrates experimentally a spintronic full adder based on the anomalous Hall effect and geometrical tuning magnetization switching. By using nonlinear elements and magnetic bit switching, the memory unit of the device achieves the logic function of a full adder. With only seven magnetic bits and two steps, the computation function of the full adder is realized, showing high efficiency in terms of space and time.