In a genuinely useful piece of spintronics, engineers from European lab CEA, Hitachi, and STMicroelectronics built a 13GHz spin torque RF oscillator based on magnetic tunnelling junctions that is 50x smaller than the equivalent LC oscillator, and tunes over 85% of its frequency compared with 15% for LC types. Measurements over one minute show phase jitter of 36ps(RMS) with the oscillator set at 7.36GHz. The required stack of magnetic layers has a footprint only 90nm across and is constructed by sputtering.
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Posted: Feb 11,2009 by Ron Mertens