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Science 11 April 2008:
Vol. 320. no. 5873, pp. 209 - 211
DOI: 10.1126/science.1154587
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Reports

Current-Controlled Magnetic Domain-Wall Nanowire Shift Register

Masamitsu Hayashi, Luc Thomas, Rai Moriya, Charles Rettner, Stuart S. P. Parkin*

The controlled motion of a series of domain walls along magnetic nanowires using spin-polarized current pulses is the essential ingredient of the proposed magnetic racetrack memory, a new class of potential non-volatile storage-class memories. Using permalloy nanowires, we achieved the successive creation, motion, and detection of domain walls by using sequences of properly timed, nanosecond-long, spin-polarized current pulses. The cycle time for the writing and shifting of the domain walls was a few tens of nanoseconds. Our results illustrate the basic concept of a magnetic shift register that relies on the phenomenon of spin-momentum transfer to move series of closely spaced domain walls.

IBM Research Division, Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA 95120, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: parkin{at}almaden.ibm.com

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)