| AVS 55th International Symposium & Exhibition | |
| Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session MI+NC-WeM |
| Session: | Magnetic Thin Films, Nanoparticles and Nanostructures |
| Presenter: | W. Chen, University of Virginia |
| Authors: | W. Chen, University of Virginia J. Lu, University of Virginia K. West, University of Virginia W. Egelhoff, National Institute of Standards and Technology S.A. Wolf, University of Virginia |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with AlOx barriers are deposited using a unique tool called Reactive Biased Target Ion Beam Deposition system (RBTIBD) utilizing low energy ion source (0~50eV) and target biasing (50eV~1200eV). The RBTIBD system applies bias voltage directly and only on the desired targets, providing sputtering energy and avoiding "overspill" contamination during film growth. The ability to control the low ion beam energy as well as the target bias, is suited for producing high quality atomic scale interface for the multi-layer structures, which is the key for high tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) performance desired for application. A typical Exchange biased MTJs stack would be Si/SiO2/Ta/Ru/IrMn/CoFeB/AlOx/CoFeB/Ta/Ru. The magnetic properties are measured by VSM and TMR ratio of unpatterned films is measured by CIPTech technology.