| AVS 54th International Symposium | |
| Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures | Friday Sessions |
| Session MI-FrM |
| Session: | Spin Injection, Transfer, and Tunneling |
| Presenter: | M.C. Gaidis, IBM |
| Authors: | M.C. Gaidis, IBM E.A. Joseph, IBM E.J. O'Sullivan, IBM S. Assefa, IBM |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Magnetic Random Access Memory (MRAM) offers the potential of a universal memory – it can be simultaneously fast, nonvolatile, dense, and high-endurance. Depending on application, these qualities can make MRAM more attractive than SRAM, DRAM, flash, and hard drive memories, with a market measured in the billions of dollars. Small-scale demonstrations have realized much of the potential of MRAM, but scaling the memory to competitive sizes or embedding the memory with logic circuitry creates unique processing challenges. The building of MRAM memories in back-end-of-line (BEOL) circuitry imposes additional requirements on processes which conform to existing semiconductor fabrication facility standards. This presentation provides an overview of the basic MRAM structure and operation, followed by a discussion of MRAM-specific processing techniques and developments to obtain high yield across 200mm substrates. The potential for scaling MRAM for future generations with spin-momentum-transfer (SMT) devices will be discussed in this framework. Practical limitations on SMT scaling, and SMT adaptation of conventional MRAM processing will be reviewed.