Experimental Clocking of Nanomagnets with Strain for Ultra Low Power Boolean Logic

Nanomagnetic implementations of Boolean logic [1,2] have garnered attention because of their non-volatility and the potential for unprecedented energy-efficiency. Unfortunately, the large dissipative losses that take place when nanomagnets are switched with a magnetic field [3], or spin-transfer-torque [4] inhibit the promised energy-efficiency. Recently, there have been experimental reports of utilizing the Spin Hall effect for switching magnets [5-7], and theoretical proposals for strain induced switching of single-domain magnetostrictive nanomagnets [8-12], that might reduce the dissipative losses significantly. Here, we demonstrate, for the first time, that strain-induced switching of single-domain magnetostrictive nanomagnets of lateral dimensions ~200 nm fabricated on a piezoelectric substrate can implement a nanomagnetic Boolean NOT gate and unidirectional bit information propagation in dipole-coupled nanomagnets chains. This portends ultra-low-energy logic processors and mobile electronics that may be able to operate solely by harvesting energy from the environment without ever requiring a battery.