Cryogenic-temperature Grain-to-grain Epitaxial Growth of High-quality Ultrathin CoFe Layer on MgO Tunnel Barrier for High-performance Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

Abstract

One candidate for ultimate non-volatile memory with ultralow power consumption is magneto-resistive random-access memory (VC-MRAM). To develop VC-MRAM, it is important to fabricate high-performance magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), which require the epitaxial growth of an ultrathin ferromagnetic electrode on a crystalline tunnel barrier using a mass-manufacturing-compatible process. In this study, the grain-to-grain epitaxial growth of perpendicularly magnetized CoFe ultrathin films on polycrystalline MgO (001) was demonstrated using cryogenic-temperature sputtering on 300 mm Si wafers. Cryogenic-temperature sputtering at 100 K suppressed the island-like initial growth of CoFe on MgO without hampering epitaxy. Sub-nanometer-thick CoFe layers exhibited remarkable perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA). An even larger PMA was obtained using an Fe-doped MgO (MgFeO) tunnel barrier owing to improved uniformity of the CoFe layer. A 0.8-nm-thick CoFe layer grown on MgFeO exhibited a magnetic damping constant as low as 0.008. The ultralow magnetic damping enables voltage-driven magnetization switching with a low write-error rate (WER) below 10^-6 at a pulse duration of 0.3 ns, and WER on the order of 10^-3 even for a relatively long pulse duration of 1.5 ns. These properties achieved using a mass-manufacturing deposition process can promote the development of VC-MRAM and other advanced spintronic devices based on MTJs.