Time-differential sense amplifier for sub-80mV bitline voltage embedded STT-MRAM in 40nm CMOS

Spin-torque-transfer (STT) MRAM is a promising candidate for embedded non-volatile memory in next generation microcontrollers, because of superior endurance, low process costs and logic supply voltage operation. Two major drawbacks of STT-MRAM technology are the small read window because of the low tunnel magnetic resistance (TMR) ratio, and the low read current due to read disturb, which is proportional to the bitline (BL) voltage [1].