AVS 50th International Symposium
    Magnetic Interfaces and Nanostructures Wednesday Sessions
       Session MI+TF-WeA

Paper MI+TF-WeA10
Biased Target Ion Beam Deposition of GMR Multilayers

Wednesday, November 5, 2003, 5:00 pm, Room 316

Session: Magnetic Thin Films
Presenter: X.W. Zhou, University of Virginia
Authors: H.N.G. Wadley, University of Virginia
X.W. Zhou, University of Virginia
J.J. Quan, University of Virginia
S. Subha, University of Virginia
T. Hylton, 4Wave, Inc.
D. Baldwin, 4Wave, Inc.
Correspondent: Click to Email
Detailed atomistic simulations have identified the preferred deposition conditions for growing the ideal atomic structures that maximize the performance of giant magneto resistive (GMR) multilayers. They reveal that increasing the velocity (energy) of condensing atoms or assisting ion fluxes flattens interfaces, but promotes atomic interlayer mixing. The maximum magneto resistance is believed to occur for the lowest combination of interfacial roughness and interlayer mixing. Low values of this metric have been predicted to occur using a constant intermediate energy of a few electron volts throughout the growth process. However, the lowest values of the metric have been predicted to occur when a modulation of the energy during deposition of each material layer is used. It is difficult to implement such processes in a conventional PVD or ion beam system. We have developed a biased target ion beam deposition system to overcome these difficulties and report its design and the characteristics of the spintronic devices grown with it.