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Effect of ion irradiation on the characteristics of magnetic tunnel junctions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2005

T. Banerjee ,
T. Som ,
D. Kanjilal  and
J. S. Moodera
T. Banerjee*
Affiliation:
MESA Institute for Nanotechnology, University of Twente, 7500 AE Enschede, The Netherlands Francis Bitter Magnet Lab, MIT, 170 Albany Street, Cambridge, MA02139, USA
T. Som
Affiliation:
Institute of Physics, Sachivalaya Marg, Bhubaneswar 751005, Orissa, India
D. Kanjilal
Affiliation:
Nuclear Science Centre, Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi 110 067, India
J. S. Moodera
Affiliation:
Francis Bitter Magnet Lab, MIT, 170 Albany Street, Cambridge, MA02139, USA
*
T.Banerjee@ewi.utwente.nl
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Abstract

The effect of disorder caused by MeV heavy ion irradiation on the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of magnetic tunnel junctions is investigated. Two types of tunnel junctions, viz. Co/Al2O3/Ni80Fe20 and Co/Gd-doped Al2O3/Ni80Fe20 are studied. Upon 70 MeV Si ion irradiation at a fluence of $5\times10^{11}$ ions/cm2, the undoped junctions show relatively small but irreversible change, while the Gd-doped junctions show a huge reduction, in TMR. In both cases junctions were completely destroyed by 200 MeV Ag ion irradiation at a fluence of $1 \times 10^{11}$ ions/cm2. The results are attributed to the modification of the barrier and the neighboring interfaces caused by the high energy density deposited by incident ions.

Keywords

Type
Research Article
Information
The European Physical Journal - Applied Physics , Volume 32 , Issue 2 , November 2005 , pp. 115 - 118
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2005

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