Hybrid CMOS / Magnetic Process Design Kit and application to the design of reliable and low-power non-volatile logic circuits

Spintronics is a continuously expending area of research and development at the merge between magnetism and electronics. It aims at taking advantage of the quantum characteristic of the electrons, i.e. its spin, to create new functionalities and new devices. Spintronic devices typically rely on the Magneto Resistive (MR) effects, which consists in a dependence of the electrical resistance upon the magnetic configuration. These devices can be used to conceive innovative nonvolatile memories, high-perfomance logic circuits, RF oscillators or field/current sensors. We present here how these hybrid CMOS/Magnetic logic circuits can help circumventing some of the limits of CMOS-only microelectronics in terms of reliability or power consumption as well as the tools required to design such circuits.