Dynamic Error in Strain-Induced Magnetization Reversal of Nanomagnets Due to Incoherent Switching and Formation of Metastable States: A Size-Dependent Study

Modulation of stress anisotropy of magnetostrictive nanomagnets with strain offers an extremely energy-efficient method of magnetization reversal. The reversal process, however, is often incoherent and hence, error-prone in the presence of thermal noise at room temperature. Occurrence of incoherent metastable states in the potential landscape of the nanomagnet can further exacerbate the error. Stochastic micromagnetic simulations at room temperature are used to understand and calculate energy dissipations and switching error probabilities in this important magnetization switching methodology. We find that these quantities have an intriguing dependence on nanomagnet size. Small nanomagnets perform better owing to the fact that they are more resilient to the formation of metastable states and magnetization dynamics in them is more coherent. However, for a fixed stress anisotropy energy density, smaller nanomagnets will also have poorer resilience against thermal instability. Thus, the challenge in straintronics is to maximize the stress anisotropy energy density by developing materials and processes that yield the largest magnetostriction.