Utilization of magnetoelectric potential in ballistic nanodevices

Abstract

We propose a ballistic, coherent transmission system that utilizes the magnetic and electric barriers as Boolean input variables to realize functions similar in principle to the conventional logic gates. For practical implementation of these functions, we propose to use a device construct based on the high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) with ferromagnetic (FM) and nonmagnetic (NM) metal gates deposited on top of the HEMT heterostructure. This device system can be manipulated to realize multiple logic functions such as OR, AND, and their inverse by applying different magnetic and electric field configurations on the FM and the NM gates. The charge transport simulation is based on the single particle effective mass Hamiltonian and ballistic charge transport. The calculation results demonstrate clear binary outputs corresponding to various logic functions, with "high" ("low") state having transmission probability of T>90% (T<10%). © 2006 American Institute of Physics.