Co/Ni based p-MTJ stack for sub-20nm high density stand alone and high performance embedded memory application

Author

Kar, G.S. ; Kim, W. ; Tahmasebi, T. ; Swerts, J. ; Mertens, S. ; Heylen, N. ; Min, T.

Author_Institution

imec, Leuven, Belgium

fYear

2014

Abstract

Excellent tunnel magneto resistance (TMR) values of 143% at resistance-area products (RA) of 4.7 Ωμm² from 11nm thin Co/Ni based perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (p-MTJ) was achieved. Engineered wetting layer (WL), seed layer (SL) and the introduction of newly designed inner synthetic anti-ferromagnetic (iSAF) pinned layer in combination with ultra-smooth bottom electrode (roughness 0.5 Å) was yielded to vertically scaled 11nm thick Co/Ni p-MTJ stack with excellent magnetic properties. The introduction of iSAF layer demonstrates for the 1^st time the free layer offset field controllability (<; 100 Oe) of the spin-transfer-torque (STT) magnetic random access memory (MRAM) device down to 12 nm in diameter.

Keywords

MRAM devices; cobalt; magnetic tunnelling; magnetoelectronics; magnetoresistance; nickel; wetting; Co-Ni; MRAM device; STT; TMR; embedded memory application; iSAF pinned layer; inner synthetic antiferromagnetic pinned layer; magnetic random access memory device; p-MTJ stack; perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions; seed layer; size 11 nm; size 12 nm; spin-transfer-torque; tunnel magnetoresistance; wetting layer; Annealing; Magnetic multilayers; Magnetic tunneling; Nickel; Nonhomogeneous media; Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy; Tunneling magnetoresistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), 2014 IEEE International

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2014.7047080

Filename

7047080