Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with ferromagnetic electrodes possessing a perpendicular magnetic easy axis are of great interest as they have a potential for realizing next-generation high-density non-volatile memory and logic chips with high thermal stability and low critical current for current-induced magnetization switching. To attain perpendicular anisotropy, a number of material systems have been explored as electrodes, which include rare-earth/transition-metal alloys, L1(0)-ordered (Co, Fe)-Pt alloys and Co/(Pd, Pt) multilayers. However, none of them so far satisfy high thermal stability at reduced dimension, low-current current-induced magnetization switching and high tunnel magnetoresistance ratio all at the same time. Here, we use interfacial perpendicular anisotropy between the ferromagnetic electrodes and the tunnel barrier of the MTJ by employing the material combination of CoFeB-MgO, a system widely adopted to produce a giant tunnel magnetoresistance ratio in MTJs with in-plane anisotropy. This approach requires no material other than those used in conventional in-plane-anisotropy MTJs. The perpendicular MTJs consisting of Ta/CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB/Ta show a high tunnel magnetoresistance ratio, over 120%, high thermal stability at dimension as low as 40 nm diameter and a low switching current of 49 microA.
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The authors studied an effect of ferromagnetic (Co 20 Fe 60 B 20 or Fe) layer insertion on tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) properties of MgO-barrier magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with CoFe/Pd multilayer electrodes. TMR ratio in MTJs with CoFeB/MgO/Fe stack reached 67% at annealing temperature (T a ) of 200 o C and then decreased rapidly at T a over 250 o C. The degradation of the TMR ratio may be related to crystallization of CoFe(B) into fcc(111) or bcc(011) texture resulting from diffusion of B into Pd layers. MTJs which were in-situ annealed at 350 o C just after depositing bottom CoFe/Pd multilayer showed TMR ratio of 78% by post annealing at T a =200°C.
We investigated the dependence of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in CoFeB-MgO on the MgO layer thickness. Magnetization curves show that a clear perpendicular magnetic easy axis is obtainable in a 1.5-nm thick CoFeB layer by depositing MgO of more than three monolayers. We investigated anisotropy in CoFeB-MgO deposited on four different buffer layers. Results show that a counter interface of CoFeB-nonmagnetic metal affects the perpendicular anisotropy of CoFeB/MgO.
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