KNACK: A hybrid spin-charge mixed-mode simulator for evaluating different genres of spin-transfer torque MRAM bit-cells

The storage device in spin-transfer torque MRAM (STT-MRAM) is the magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) and several models for the MTJ have been proposed. However, a simulation framework that captures device physics at the atomistic level when simulating STT-MRAM at the bit-cell level is lacking. We propose a simulation framework (KNACK) which models the MTJ at the atomistic level using the Non-Equilibrium Green's Function (NEGF) formalism and uses the NEGF model in conjunction with our STT-MRAM bit-cell circuit model for circuit-level simulations. Our simulation framework accepts I–V and C-V characteristics of the access device input either as lookup tables or as compact models. We show that with appropriate device and bit-cell parameters, our simulation framework has the ability to capture MTJ physics and simulate different genres of STT-MRAM bit-cells with results in agreement with experiments.