Applications related to artificial intelligence (AI), 5G communication, cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT) will necessitate wide range of data collection, communication and processing. Current charge-based technology using conventional materials suffers adverse effects with down-scaling the device size and has limited efficiency in meeting the future demands for computation and data storage. The exploration of alternative device technology along with new materials is important to enhance computing performance and energy efficiency. In this thesis, I investigated new materials for future memory and logic technologies.\ua0 Recently developed 2D materials such as graphene, semiconductors, and semimetals exhibit remarkable new properties that promise faster and energy efficient non-volatile memory and logic functionalities. For non-volatile memory technologies, increasing efforts are being directed towards exploiting charge-spin conversion phenomena in high spin-orbit coupling (SOC) materials to realize all-electric magnetic memory. Interestingly, magnetic memory devices have been demonstrated on an industrial scale; however, the moderate efficiency and fundamental limitations of the conventional materials employed limit their use in consumer electronics. This thesis addresses some of these critical challenges and presents charge-spin conversion mechanisms in layered high SOC materials such as topological insulators, semimetals, and two-dimensional (2D) materials heterostructures. At the same time, this thesis contributes in the direction of integrating memory and logic devices by investigating 2D semiconductor devices with sub-20 nm narrow channel width and memristive switching in field-effect transistors using 2D semiconductors with graphene contacts. Such 2D semiconductors have enormous prospects for next-generation high-performance and energy-efficient nanoscale field-effect transistors and integration with memory technologies. These studies of charge and spin transport in 2D materials and heterostructures can open the door for nanometer-scale memory, logic and sensing technologies
