Pulsed current switching of submicrometer MRAM cell

Author

Bhattacharyya, Manoj ; Tran, Lung ; Nickel, Janice ; Anthony, Thomas

Author_Institution

Hewlett-Packard Labs., Palo Alto, CA, USA

Volume

39

Issue

5

fYear

2003

Firstpage

2845

Lastpage

2847

Abstract

Thermally assisted switching of submicrometer magnetic tunnel junctions is investigated. It is found that writing can be done with pulses of the order of 1 ns. Switching current and switching current jitter are seen as strong functions of temperature, whereas both are only weakly dependent on current pulse duration. Micromagnetic modeling using a stochastic Landau-Lifschitz equation is used to understand thermal effects. The simulation predicts the observed switching current but does not explain the magnitude of the switching current jitter.

Keywords

magnetic storage; magnetic switching; magnetic tunnelling; micromagnetics; random-access storage; tunnelling magnetoresistance; 1 ns; current pulse duration; micromagnetic modeling; pulsed current switching; stochastic Landau-Lifschitz equation; submicrometer MRAM cell; submicrometer magnetic tunnel junctions; switching current; switching current jitter; thermal effects; thermally assisted switching; Current measurement; Electrical resistance measurement; Jitter; Lungs; Magnetic field measurement; Pulse measurements; Space vector pulse width modulation; Stochastic processes; Temperature; Writing;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Magnetics, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9464

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TMAG.2003.816241

Filename

1233235