The spin switch oscillator: A new approach based on gain and feedback

Motivation and Key Results: The traditional spin transfer nano-oscillator (STNO) utilizes spin current as an anti-damping mechanism to cancel the damping related to the motion of magnet to generate persistent oscillations of nano-magnets. However, at present STNO has very low output power (<< μW) and usually requires external magnet field to operate [1]-[3]. Here, we propose a new kind of oscillator based on the standard principle of incorporating feedback into a device with gain, which should exhibit a high tunable output power (0–30 μW) without the need of external magnetic fields. The gain is provided by the recently proposed spin switch (SS) device [4] which combines a giant spin Hall effect (GSHE)-based Write device with a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ)-based Read device in a unique configuration that provides a transistor-like electrical isolation between input and output.