Observation of boron diffusion in an annealed Ta/CoFeB/MgO magnetic tunnel junction with standing-wave hard x-ray photoemission

被引：65

作者：

Greer, A. A. ^{[1
,2
,3
]}

Gray, A. X. ^{[1
,3
,4
,5
]}

Kanai, S. ^{[6
]}

Kaiser, A. M. ^{[1
,3
,7
]}

Ueda, S. ^{[8
]}

Yamashita, Y. ^{[8
]}

Bordel, C. ^{[9
,10
]}

Palsson, G. ^{[1
,3
]}

Maejima, N. ^{[11
]}

Yang, S. -H. ^{[12
]}

Conti, G. ^{[1
,3
]}

Kobayashi, K. ^{[8
]}

Ikeda, S. ^{[6
,13
]}

Matsukura, F. ^{[6
,13
,14
]}

Ohno, H. ^{[6
,13
,14
]}

Schneider, C. M. ^{[7
]}

Kortright, J. B. ^{[3
]}

Hellman, F. ^{[3
,9
]}

Fadley, C. S. ^{[1
,3
]}

机构：

[1] Univ Calif Davis, Dept Phys, Davis, CA 95616 USA

[2] Univ Calif Davis, Dept Chem Engn & Mat Sci Engn, Davis, CA 95616 USA

[3] Univ Calif Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley Natl Lab, Div Mat Sci, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA

[4] Stanford Univ, Stanford Inst Mat & Energy Sci, Menlo Pk, CA 94025 USA

[5] SLAC Natl Accelerator Lab, Menlo Pk, CA 94025 USA

[6] Tohoku Univ, Res Inst Elect Commun, Lab Nanoelect & Spintron, Sendai, Miyagi 9808577, Japan

[7] Julich Res Ctr, Peter Grunberg Inst, D-52425 Julich, Germany

[8] Natl Inst Mat Sci, NIMS Beamline Stn SPring 8, Mikazuki, Hyogo 6795148, Japan

[9] Univ Calif Berkeley, Dept Phys, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA

[10] Univ Rouen, UMR CNRS 6634, GPM, F-76801 St Etienne, France

[11] Nara Inst Sci & Technol, Nara 6300192, Japan

[12] IBM Corp, Almaden Res Ctr, San Jose, CA 95120 USA

[13] Tohoku Univ, Ctr Spintron Integrated Syst, Aoba Ku, Sendai, Miyagi 9808577, Japan

[14] Tohoku Univ, WPI Adv Inst Mat Res, Sendai, Miyagi 9808577, Japan

来源：

APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS | 2012年 / 101卷 / 20期

关键词：

annealing; boron alloys; cobalt alloys; diffusion; iron alloys; magnesium compounds; magnetic tunnelling; magnetoelectronics; photoemission; tantalum; X-ray spectroscopy; PHOTOELECTRON; SPECTROSCOPY;

D O I：

10.1063/1.4766351

中图分类号：

O59 [应用物理学];

学科分类号：

摘要：

The CoFeB/MgO system shows promise as a magnetic tunnel junction with perpendicular magnetization and low critical current densities for spin-torque driven magnetization switching. The distribution of B after annealing is believed to be critical to performance. We have studied the distribution of B in a Ta/Co0.2Fe0.6B0.2/MgO sample annealed at 300 degrees C for 1 h with standing-wave hard x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (SW-HXPS). Comparing experimental rocking curve data to x-ray optical calculations indicates diffusion of 19.5% of the B uniformly into the MgO and of 23.5% into a thin TaB interface layer. SW-HXPS is effective for probing depth distributions in such spintronic structures. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4766351]

引用

页数：4

共 22 条

[1] Atomic-scale spectroscopic imaging of CoFeB/Mg-B-O/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions [J].