Antiferromagnetic Skyrmion-Based Logic Gates Controlled by Electric Currents and Fields

TL;DR

This paper explores the control of antiferromagnetic skyrmions using electric currents and fields to develop logic gates, demonstrating potential for ultra-low energy, high-density non-volatile computing devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel design for antiferromagnetic skyrmion-based logic gates controlled by electric currents and voltage, advancing spintronic computing technology.

Findings

Skyrmions can be controlled by current and voltage in antiferromagnetic nanotracks.

Logic gates (AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR) can be realized using skyrmion manipulation.

Proposed gates operate with ultra-low energy and high storage density.

Abstract

Antiferromagnets are promising materials for future spintronic applications due to their unique properties including zero stray fields, robustness versus external magnetic fields and ultrafast dynamics, which have attracted extensive interest in recent years. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of isolated skyrmions in an antiferromagnetic nanotrack with a voltage-gated region. It is found that the skyrmion can be jointly controlled by the driving current and the voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy gradient. We further propose a design of logic computing gates based on the manipulation of antiferromagnetic skyrmions, which is numerically realized combining several interactions and phenomena, including the spin Hall effect, voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy effect, skyrmion-skyrmion interaction, and skyrmion-edge interaction. The proposed logic gates can perform the basic Boolean operations of the logic AND, OR, NOT, NAND and NOR gates. Our results may have a great impact on fundamental physics, and be useful for designing future non-volatile logic computing devices with ultra-low energy consumption and ultra-high storage density.