Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Ta vertical bar Co40Fe40B20 vertical bar MgAl2O4 structures and perpendicular CoFeB vertical bar MgAl2O4 vertical bar CoFeB magnetic tunnel junction

Magnetic properties of Co40Fe40B20 (CoFeB) thin films sandwiched between Ta and MgAl2O4 layers have been systematically studied. For as-grown state, Ta/CoFeB/MgAl2O4 structures exhibit good perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) with interface anisotropy K-i = 1.22 erg/cm(2), which further increases to 1.30 erg/cm(2) after annealing, while MgAl2O4/CoFeB/Ta multilayer shows in-plane magnetic anisotropy and must be annealed in order to achieve PMA. For bottom CoFeB layer, the thickness window for PMA is from 0.6 to 1.0nm, while that for top CoFeB layer is between 0.8 and 1.4 nm. Perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (p-MTJs) with a core structure of CoFeB/MgAl2O4/CoFeB have also been fabricated and tunneling magnetoresistance ratio of about 36% at room temperature and 63% at low temperature have been obtained. The intrinsic excitations in the p-MTJs have been identified by inelastic electron-tunneling spectroscopy. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.