Influence of Mg insert layers on interface magnetism in crystalline CoFe(B)/MgO/CoFe(B) magnetic tunnel junctions

DOI

We plan to investigate the influence of thin Mg insert layers on magnetism at buried interfaces in structures that model the lower electrode/barrier interface in technologically-relevant crystalline CoFe(B)/MgO/CoFe(B) magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). Inserting a thin layer of Mg prior to depositing MgO enhances the performance of annealed MTJ devices: however the reason for this enhancement is not well understood. We propose to use specular and off-specular polarized neutron reflectivity on a series of annealed and unannealed structures with different Mg insert thicknesses in order to gain a basic understanding into how Mg insert layers improve MTJ device performance. Structural and magnetic properties of the buried CoFe(B)/MgO interface will be extracted from magnetization and scattering-length-density profiles, complementing our existing electron microscopy and synchrotron studies.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.24088325
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/24088325
Provenance
Creator Professor Christopher Marrows; Dr Aidan Hindmarch; Dr Christy Kinane
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2015
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Photon- and Neutron Geosciences
Temporal Coverage Begin 2011-12-19T09:20:31Z
Temporal Coverage End 2012-10-01T20:25:54Z