Journal
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS
Volume 108, Issue 13, Pages -Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.4945089
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- IMEC's Industrial Affiliation Program on STT-MRAM devices
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Alternative free layer materials with high perpendicular anisotropy are researched to provide spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory stacks' sufficient thermal stability at critical dimensions of 20 nm and below. We demonstrate a high tunnel magetoresistance ( TMR) MgO-based magnetic tunnel junction stack with a hybrid free layer design made of a [Co/Ni] multilayer and CoFeB. The seed material on which the [Co/Ni] multilayer is deposited determines its switching characteristics. When deposited on a Pt seed layer, soft magnetic switching behavior with high squareness is obtained. When deposited on a NiCr seed, the perpendicular anisotropy remains high, but the squareness is low and coercivity exceeds 1000 Oe. Interdiffusion of the seed material with the [Co/Ni] multilayers is found to be responsible for the different switching characteristics. In optimized stacks, a TMR of 165% and low resistance-area (RA) product of 7.0 Omega mu m(2) are attained for free layers with an effective perpendicular magnetic anisotropy energy of 1.25 erg/cm(2), which suggests that the hybrid free layer materials may be a viable candidate for high density magnetic random access memory applications. (C) 2016 AIP Publishing LLC.
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