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Surface Smoothing Effects of Materials Used in Underlayer of MTJ with Gas Cluster Ion Beams

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Abstract

Surface smoothing of Ru used as underlayer of magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJ) in magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM) was carried out with gas cluster ion beam (GCIB) in order to improve device characteristics. For Ru films, surface smoothing with 5 kV N2-GCIB irradiation was effective, and CoFe films deposited on smoothed Ru surface also showed smooth surface. From the hysteresis loop measurements of MTJ formed on smoothed Ru with N2-GCIB, it showed improvement of inter-layer coupling magnetic field (Hin) with decreasing the surface roughness of underlayer Ru. It is expected that surface roughness of MgO in MTJ was also improved by smoothing of underlayer Ru with N2-GCIB.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate school of engineering, University of Hyogo, 2167 Shosha, Himeji, Hyogo, 671-2280, Japan

    Noriaki Toyoda

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  1. Noriaki Toyoda
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Toyoda, N. Surface Smoothing Effects of Materials Used in Underlayer of MTJ with Gas Cluster Ion Beams. MRS Advances 1, 357–362 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2016.80

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/adv.2016.80

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