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Owing to the intriguing physical properties and significant spintronic applications, magnetic skyrmions have recently drawn intensive attention. Particularly, the skyrmion-based non-volatile memory (Sky-NVM) devices promise to be spintronic building blocks with high efficiency. However, tailoring Sky-NVM to achieve an energy-efficient and reliable operation in a synthetic, CMOS compatible, and magnetic-field-free integration is a challenging issue. Here, we report a new type of compact Sky-NVM with tailored skyrmion motion dynamics via in-plane strain gradient engineering. The skyrmion motion is merely driven by an in-plane electric field utilizing the magnetoelectric coupling effect, and the programmable switching is realized by gate biasing the potential barrier height via a voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy. The proposed device is CMOS process compatible, and the comprehensive micromagnetic simulation results demonstrate that by applying a 0.3 V in-plane voltage combined with −0.17 V gate voltage, its write latency and the energy consumption reach 5.85 ns and 4.77 aJ/bit, respectively, superior to the state-of-the-art counterparts. Our work paves a new path toward ultra-low-power spintronic memory devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A reproducible p-type P-N codoped ZnO [ZnO:(P, N)] film with high quality was achieved by magnetron sputtering and post-annealing techniques. It has room-temperature resistivity of 3.98 Ωcm, Hall mobility of 1.35 cm2/Vs, and carrier concentration of 1.16 × 1018 cm-3, which is better than electrical properties of the p-type N-doped ZnO (ZnO:N) and p-type P-doped ZnO (ZnO:P) films. Additionally, the p-ZnO:(P, N)/n-ZnO homojunction showed a clear p-n diode characteristic. The p-type conductivity of ZnO:(P, N) is attributed to the formation of an impurity band above the valance band maximum, resulting in a reduction in the band gap and a decrease in the ionization energy of the acceptor, as well as an improvement in the conductivity and stability of the p-type ZnO:(P, N). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]