Fracture behavior of an interface crack in a magnetoelectric sandwich structure under electric field: Effects of the poling directions

Magnetoelectric (ME) sandwich structure is a common form in device applications. Poling directions of component materials are essential for the improvement of ME device properties. In this paper, the effects of the electric and magnetic poling directions on the interface fracture of a ME sandwich structure are investigated by integral transform and singular integral equation techniques. The expressions of the normalized stress intensity factors (NSIFs) are derived, and some numerical examples are presented. It is found that the poling direction of active layer can greatly affect the interface cracking mode. And the crack propagation can be promoted or impeded by adjusting the applied field. The structure with a larger volume fraction of active material will be more likely to crack.

III–V nanowires for ammonia detection

Ammonia is an inorganic agent found both in nature and in the human body, which is of great interest for modern sensory applications. Here we use GaP, GaN and GaAs epitaxial nanowires as sensitive elements of the ammonia sensors fabricated via a simple protocol on the platform with golden interdigital contacts. Impedancemetry is used to study change of the device properties with addition of ammonia to the reference medium (water). GaP and GaN-based devices exhibit sufficient response to the ammonia presence with the detection limit lower than 10ppm. This work is aimed at fabrication and study of precise, technological and relatively cheap ammonia sensors compatible with a liquid medium, and motivated by the possibility of using this type of adsorption sensors in medical, environmental equipment and biological purposes.

Performance Analysis of Tunnel FET Based Ring Oscillator Using Sentaurus TCAD

A detailed Sentaurus TCAD simulation based study for Silicon Double Gate Tunnel Field Effect Transistor (Si-DG TFET) based Ring Oscillator (RO) is presented in this work. Two different ring oscillator topologies (simple RO and Negative Skewed Delay RO)are presented with two different structures for TFET device. The two structures are different in the source-drain extension regions widths. The extension region width variation effects are studied and presented for inverter and ring oscillator. A TFET based inverter is presented to show the changes in behavior due to variations in the drain extension region widths, which is later used for RO designs. The drain extension region width changes the drain extension region resistances which in turn is responsible for change in the corresponding device properties. RO simulation are used for calculating the delay. To further explore digital and analog applications transfer characteristics and noise margins of inverter are explored with power supplies variations. Better reliability for oscillation frequency is obtained using Negative Skewed Delay ring oscillator (NSD RO) topology. NSD RO is resulting in lesser jitter, more reliable frequency as compared to single-ended ring oscillator topology. By tuning the supply voltage of the device the ring oscillator frequency can be used for RF applications, thus it works like a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO).

Molecular coupling competing with defects within insulator of the magnetic tunnel junction-based molecular spintronics devices

Nearly 70 years old dream of incorporating molecule as the device element is still challenged by competing defects in almost every experimentally tested molecular device approach. This paper focuses on the magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) based molecular spintronics device (MTJMSD) method. An MTJMSD utilizes a tunnel barrier to ensure a robust and mass-producible physical gap between two ferromagnetic electrodes. MTJMSD approach may benefit from MTJ's industrial practices; however, the MTJMSD approach still needs to overcome additional challenges arising from the inclusion of magnetic molecules in conjunction with competing defects. Molecular device channels are covalently bonded between two ferromagnets across the insulating barrier. An insulating barrier may possess a variety of potential defects arising during the fabrication or operational phase. This paper describes an experimental and theoretical study of molecular coupling between ferromagnets in the presence of the competing coupling via an insulating tunnel barrier. We discuss the experimental observations of hillocks and pinhole-type defects producing inter-layer coupling that compete with molecular device elements. We performed theoretical simulations to encompass a wide range of competition between molecules and defects. Monte Carlo Simulation (MCS) was used for investigating the defect-induced inter-layer coupling on MTJMSD. Our research may help understand and design molecular spintronics devices utilizing various insulating spacers such as aluminum oxide (AlOx) and magnesium oxide (MgO) on a wide range of metal electrodes. This paper intends to provide practical insights for researchers intending to investigate the molecular device properties via the MTJMSD approach and do not have a background in magnetic tunnel junction fabrication.

Improved Synaptic Device Properties of HfAlOx Dielectric on Highly Doped Silicon Substrate by Partial Reset Process

This work demonstrates the synaptic properties of the alloy-type resistive random-access memory (RRAM). We fabricated the HfAlOx-based RRAM for a synaptic device in a neuromorphic system. The deposition of the HfAlOx film on the silicon substrate was verified by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analysis. It was found that both abrupt and gradual resistive switching could be implemented, depending on the reset stop voltage. In the reset process, the current gradually decreased at weak voltage, and at strong voltage, it tended to decrease rapidly by Joule heating. The type of switching determined by the first reset process was subsequently demonstrated to be stable switching by successive set and reset processes. A gradual switching type has a much smaller on/off window than abrupt switching. In addition, retention maintained stability up to 2000 s in both switching cases. Next, the multiple current states were tested in the gradual switching case by identical pulses. Finally, we demonstrated the potentiation and depression of the Cu/HfAlOx/Si device as a synapse in an artificial neural network and confirmed that gradual resistive switching was suitable for artificial synapses, using neuromorphic system simulation.