Field-free spin–orbit devices via heavy-metal alloy with opposite spin Hall angles for in-memory computing.

With the advantages of high speed, low energy consumption, and non-volatility, spin–orbit devices are promising to be used in the field of in-memory computing. However, for large-scale integration, a simpler field-free switching scheme needs to be further explored. Here, we prepared field-free spin–orbit devices based on the PtW alloy layer with competing spin currents. The preparation of such devices is friendly to integration, because there is no requirement of introducing additional processing technology. Only the traditional heavy-metal layer is needed to be replaced by an alloy layer with opposite spin Hall angles. A series of positive and negative pulsed current tests have shown a stable field-free magnetization switching in the Ta/PtW/Co/AlOx/Pt device. The programmable Boolean logic of NAND and NOR were performed in a single device by changing the initial magnetization state. In addition, a pair of devices were connected with always opposite magnetizations to implement the XNOR logic gate, which can be applied to perform the dot product operation in the binary neural network. Based on the spin XNOR gates, a three-layer binary neural network achieves 89% recognition accuracy of handwritten digits. Our findings pave the way to efficient in-memory computing applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]