Switching of Dipole Coupled Multiferroic Nanomagnets in the Presence of Thermal Noise: Reliability of Nanomagnetic Logic

The stress-induced switching behavior of a multiferroic nanomagnet, dipole coupled to a hard nanomagnet, is numerically studied by solving the stochastic Landau-Lifshitz-Gilbert equation for a single-domain macrospin state. Different factors were found to affect the switching probability in the presence of thermal noise at room temperature: 1) dipole coupling strength, 2) stress levels, and 3) stress withdrawal rates (ramp rates). We report that the thermal broadening of the magnetization distribution causes large switching error rates. This could render nanomagnetic logic schemes that rely on dipole coupling to perform Boolean logic operations impractical whether they are clocked by stress or field or other means.