Spin valve element and method of driving same
AssigneeFuji Electric Co., Ltd.
InventorsHaruo Kawakami, Yasushi Ogimoto, Eiki Adachi
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A method for driving a spin valve element, including passing driving current through the spin valve element to generate an oscillation signal, and performing amplitude modulation of the driving current at a frequency lower than the oscillation frequency of oscillation signals. This amplitude modulation can be ON-OFF modulation, and the interval ton in the conducting state of the ON-OFF modulation is made to satisfy the relation ton<D2/α, where α is the thermal diffusivity of the heat diffusion portion, and D is the thickness of the heat diffusion portion.
Claims7
A method of driving a spin valve element having an intermediate layer, which is an insulating layer or an electrically conductive nonmagnetic layer, a pair of ferromagnetic layers sandwiching the intermediate layer, and a heat diffusion portion in contact with one of the pair of the ferromagnetic layers and not in contact with the intermediate layer, comprising:
- passing a driving current through the spin valve element to generate an oscillation signal;
- and
- performing binary ON-OFF modulation on the driving current using a frequency lower than an oscillation frequency of the oscillation signal, the binary ON-OFF modulation including a conducting state, and a shutoff state in which the driving current passing through the spin valve element is zero.
A method of driving a spin valve element having an intermediate layer, which is an insulating layer or an electrically conductive nonmagnetic layer, a pair of ferromagnetic layers sandwiching the intermediate layer, and a heat diffusion portion in contact with one of the pair of the ferromagnetic layers and out of contact with the intermediate layer, comprising:
- passing a driving current through the spin valve element to generate an oscillation signal;
- and
- performing binary ON-OFF modulation on the driving current using a frequency lower than an oscillation frequency of the oscillation signal, the binary ON-OFF modulation including a conducting state, and a shutoff state in which the driving current passing through the spin valve element is zero, wherein
- the conducting state of the ON-OFF modulation has an interval ton smaller than D2/α, α being a thermal diffusivity of the heat diffusion portion and D being a thickness of the heat diffusion portion.
A spin valve element, comprising:
- an intermediate layer, which is an insulating layer or an electrically conductive nonmagnetic layer;
- a pair of ferromagnetic layers sandwiching the intermediate layer;
- and
- a heat diffusion portion in contact with one of the pair of the ferromagnetic layers and not in contact with the intermediate layer, and having a thickness D that satisfies the relation 0.5 nsec <D2/α, α being a thermal diffusivity of the heat diffusion portion.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.