A low temperature functioning CoFeB/MgO-based perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction for cryogenic nonvolatile random access memory
Lili Lang, Yujie Jiang, Fei Lu, Cailu Wang, Yizhang Chen, Andrew D. Kent, Li Ye
Abstract
We investigated the low temperature performance of CoFeB/MgO-based perpendicular magnetic tunnel junctions (pMTJs) by characterizing their quasi-static switching voltage, high speed pulse write error rate, and endurance down to 9 K. pMTJ devices exhibited high magnetoresistance (>120%) and reliable (error rate < 10−4) bi-directional switching with 2–200 ns voltage pulses. The endurance of the devices at 9 K surpassed that at 300 K by three orders of magnitude under the same write conditions, functioning for more than 1012 cycles with 10 ns write pulses. The switching voltage at 9 K was observed to increase by 33% to 93%, depending on the pulse duration, compared to that at 350 K. Ferromagnetic resonance and magnetization measurements on blanket pMTJ film stacks suggest that the increased switching voltage is associated with an increase in the energy barrier of the free layer with decreasing temperature. Our work demonstrates that CoFeB/MgO-based pMTJs have great potential to enable cryogenic magnetic random access memory and that their exchange stiffness, magnetization, and effective magnetic anisotropy can be further optimized to lower operating power and improve endurance.