Low-voltage and high-speed switching of a magnetoelectric element for energy efficient compute

150 mV voltage-driven switching of a ferromagnet (FM) exchange-coupled to 6-nm-thick lanthanum-doped BiFeO3 (LBFO) was demonstrated at room temperature (RT). Further, less than 2 ns 0%-90% switching of LBFO ferroelectric polarization was demonstrated through real-time oscilloscope measurements. These two results are respectively the lowest voltage magnetoelectric switching and the highest switching speed measured in LBFO, enabled by high quality epitaxial growth of ultra-thin LBFO/FM films. These results are key accomplishments for energy efficient computing as has been shown through circuit-level simulations of the magnetoelectric random access memory (ME-RAM) utilizing compact models calibrated to the experiments in this work.