We demonstrate good agreement between mean dwell times measured in 50-nm-diameter perpendicularly magnetized superparamagnetic tunnel junctions (SMTJs) and theoretical calculations based on Langer’s theory. Due to a large entropic contribution, the theory yields Arrhenius prefactors in the femtosecond range for the measured junctions, in stark contrast to the typically assumed value of 1 ns. Due to the low prefactors, and fine tuning of the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, we report measured mean dwell times as low as 2.7 ns under an in-plane applied field at negligible bias voltage. Under a perpendicular applied field, we predict a Meyer-Neldel compensation phenomenon, whereby the prefactor scales like an exponential of the activation energy, in line with the exponential dependence of the measured dwell time on the field. We further predict the occurrence of (sub)nanosecond dwell times as a function of effective anisotropy and junction diameter at zero bias voltage. These findings hopefully pave the way toward the development of ultrafast low-power unconventional computing schemes operating by leveraging thermal noise in perpendicular SMTJs, which can be scaled down below 20 nm.

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• Entropy
• Magnetization switching
• Spintronics
• Superparamagnetism
• Magnetic tunnel junctions
• Stochastic dynamical systems
• Landau-Lifschitz-Gilbert equation
• Micromagnetic modeling