Low-power thin-film memory

Techniques have been developed to fabricate a magnetic film memory which operates with drive currents of 20 ma (milliamperes) and is, therefore, compatible with other molecular-type integrated microcircuits. The following approaches are used to achieve these objectives: drive wire width and magnetic film width are reduced to 0.005 inch, new electrodeposited magnetic film compositions which require less drive field are used, drive and sense wires are evaporated with alternate layers of silicon oxide (SiO) to give a multilayer thin film structure which reduces drive requirements and noise, and shape anisotropy is used to lower drive requirements. The theoretical basis for this new development, which lowers power requirements for film memories by an order of magnitude, will be presented, and experimental data will be shown in detail.