Equivalent Circuit for Magnetoelectric Read and Write Operations

We describe an equivalent circuit model applicable to a wide variety of magnetoelectric phenomena and use SPICE simulations to benchmark this model against experimental data. We use this model to suggest a different mode of operation where the 1 and 0 states are represented not by states with net magnetization (like m(x), m(y), or m(z)) but by different easy axes, quantitatively described by (m(x)(2) - m(y)(2)), which switches from 0 to 1 through the write voltage. This change is directly detected as a read signal through the inverse effect. The use of (m(x)(2) - m(y)(2)) to represent a bit is a radical departure from the standard convention of using the magnetization (m) to represent information. We then show how the equivalent circuit can be used to build a device exhibiting tunable randomness and suggest possibilities for extending it to nonvolatile memory with read and write capabilities, without the use of external magnetic fields or magnetic tunnel junctions.