Advanced 18 nm Quad-MTJ technology overcomes dilemma of Retention and Endurance under Scaling beyond 2X nm

Advanced quad-interfaces perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (Quad-MTJ) was developed by engineering a low effective damping constant (α eff ) material in free layer with high perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA), and low resistance area product (RA) in MgO layers, and stable reference layer. The advanced 18 nm Quad-MTJ fabricated by the developed low-damage 300 mm fabrication process exhibited following performances over those of Double-MTJ; (a) 1.77 times larger thermal stability factor (Δ), (b) 0.83 times smaller writing current (I c ) at 10 ns, (c) 2.1 times higher write efficiency (Δ/I c ) at 10 ns. Thanks to the above excellent MTJ stack design, it is the first time beyond 2X nm generation that the advanced 18 nm Quad-MTJ achieves at least 6×1011 endurance with 10 years retention. Consequently, the advanced Quad-MTJ technologies have broken out the dilemma issue of retention and endurance even under scaling of 2X nm.