Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
7992378 | Journal of Alloys and Compounds | 2018 | 19 Pages |
Abstract
The growth behavior of MgO deposited on a Mg interlayer by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) was investigated to improve the MgO layer quality for magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) applications. The Mg interlayer was inserted beneath the PE-ALD MgO film to prevent the oxidation of the bottom substrate layer. The chemical bonding status, elemental depth profile, and electron microscopy results for the PE-ALD Mg/MgO stack indicate that the Mg interlayer successfully blocked the oxidation of the substrate via its transformation to MgO. In addition, a change of the preferred orientation from (111) to (200) was observed in the X-ray diffraction pattern when the Mg interlayer was applied. This was attributed to the (200)-preferred orientation of the MgO formed through the oxidation of the Mg interlayer. The use of Mg interlayer is aim to prevent the degradation of the tunneling magneto-resistance properties by not only protecting the bottom layer (i.e., = CoFeB film in MTJs) from oxidation but also changing the preferred orientation from (111) to (200).
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Materials Science
Metals and Alloys
Authors
Seung Wook Ryu, Jeong-Gyu Song, Hyun Gu Kim, Hyungjun Kim, Han-Bo-Ram Lee,