Reconfigurable Boolean logic using magnetic single-electron transistors

M Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba; Chiara Ciccarelli; Liviu P Zarbo; Andrew C Irvine; Richard C Campion; Bryan L Gallagher; Tomas Jungwirth; Andrew J Ferguson; Joerg Wunderlich

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0125142

Reconfigurable Boolean logic using magnetic single-electron transistors

PLoS One. 2015 Apr 29;10(4):e0125142. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125142. eCollection 2015.

Authors

M Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba¹, Chiara Ciccarelli², Liviu P Zarbo³, Andrew C Irvine², Richard C Campion⁴, Bryan L Gallagher⁴, Tomas Jungwirth⁵, Andrew J Ferguson², Joerg Wunderlich⁶

Affiliations

¹ Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom.
² Cavendsih Laboratory, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
³ Institute of Physics, The Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, v.v.i, Cukrovarnick'a 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic.
⁴ School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
⁵ Institute of Physics, The Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, v.v.i, Cukrovarnick'a 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic; School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG7 2RD, United Kingdom.
⁶ Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, Cambridge CB3 0HE, United Kingdom; Institute of Physics, The Academy of Science of the Czech Republic, v.v.i, Cukrovarnick'a 10, 162 53 Praha 6, Czech Republic.

Abstract

We propose a novel hybrid single-electron device for reprogrammable low-power logic operations, the magnetic single-electron transistor (MSET). The device consists of an aluminium single-electron transistor with a GaMnAs magnetic back-gate. Changing between different logic gate functions is realized by reorienting the magnetic moments of the magnetic layer, which induces a voltage shift on the Coulomb blockade oscillations of the MSET. We show that we can arbitrarily reprogram the function of the device from an n-type SET for in-plane magnetization of the GaMnAs layer to p-type SET for out-of-plane magnetization orientation. Moreover, we demonstrate a set of reprogrammable Boolean gates and its logical complement at the single device level. Finally, we propose two sets of reconfigurable binary gates using combinations of two MSETs in a pull-down network.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Magnetic Fields*
Models, Theoretical*
Transistors, Electronic*

Grants and funding

European Community's Seventh Framework under the Grant Agreement No.318397 (http://www.tolop.eu) supported MFGZ. EU European Research Council (ERC) advance grant no. 268066, the Ministry of Education of the Czech Republic grant no. LM2011026, and the Grant Agency of the Czech Republic grant no. 14-37427G were received by TW. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Hitachi Ltd. provided support in the form of salaries for authors M. Fernando Gonzalez-Zalba and Joerg Wunderlich, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.