Multiscale and multi-physics modeling for advanced magnetic memories

The need for digital data storage solutions has been increasing exponentially over the last decade with the advance of connected objects to the internet. To sustain this growth, there is an urgent need to develop energy efficient, reliable, and sustainable digital memory building blocks that to go beyond the current ubiquitous Random-Access Memories (RAM). This project aims at contributing to this challenge by helping the development of new generations of memories. These new generations differ from the classical RAM ones; the data is no longer stored as an electric charge or as a current flow, but by using the intrinsic spin of the electron (spintronics) and its associated magnetic moment. Such memories, referred to as Magneto-resistive RAM (MRAM), are currently the object of intensive research and development efforts and offer the promise of reducing the power consumption of the memory operation by at least 60% with respect to current technologies. Though their initial performances look promising, there is still a lot of technological development required to optimize the technology. In these memories, improvements are bound to the understanding of the fundamental aspects that define material interfaces and to the establishment of device design rules that allow an improved efficient spin manipulation. Unfortunately, little is known about the factors that are driving the global spin response at the device level. The main problem is that there is a missing link between the macroscopic device reality, governed by continuum formalisms, and atomistic realities governed by local interactions. A proper connection of these theories needs to be built to describe the physics that governs the full magnetic coupling of multilayered materials. Through this proposal, we aim at fulfilling this gap by building links between material simulations and the magnetic based formalisms used to model memories to study fundamental relations between material, interface magnetic properties and device performances. The outcome of this project will be used to engineer a new generation of MRAM.