Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Almasi, H.
• Hickey, D. Reifsnyder
• Newhouse-Illige, T.
• Xu, M.
• Rosales, M. R.
• Nahar, S.
• Held, J. T.
• Mkhoyan, K. A.
• Wang, W. G.

Titel

Enhanced tunneling magnetoresistance and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Mo/CoFeB/MgO magnetic tunnel junctions

Ist Teil von

• Applied physics letters, 2015-05, Vol.106 (18)

Ort / Verlag

Melville: American Institute of Physics

Erscheinungsjahr

2015

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

AIP Journals Complete

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Structural, magnetic, and transport studies have been performed on perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (pMTJ) with Mo as the buffer and capping layers. After annealing samples at 300 °C and higher, consistently better performance was obtained compared to that of conventional pMTJs with Ta layers. Large tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) and perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) values were retained in a wide range of samples with Mo layers after annealing for 2 h at 400 °C, in sharp contrast to the junctions with Ta layers, in which superparamagnetic behavior with nearly vanishing magnetoresistance was observed. As a result of the greatly improved thermal stability, TMR as high as 162% was obtained in junctions containing Mo layers. These results highlight the importance of the heavy-metal layers adjacent to CoFeB electrodes for achieving larger TMR, stronger PMA, and higher thermal stability in pMTJs.