MgO Tunnel Barriers in Magnetic Nanostructures and Devices

Published

April 28, 2010

Author(s)

Ranko R. Heindl, Matthew Pufall, William Rippard

Abstract

In recent years, there has been a great deal of success in the development of MgO based tunnel barriers for use in magnetic devices, such as nanoscale magnetic random access memory elements (MRAM) and magnetic field sensors. Much of the focus has been on creating tunnel barriers that have ever-increasing tunneling magnetoresistance values, which today approach as much as 500 %, and lower resistance-area products, which are as low as a few Ohm-micrometers squared. These improvements afford the potential for future scaling of MRAM devices into the deep nanometer regime and solid-state CMOS compatible sensors with much improved sensitivity. This paper gives an overview of the fundamental device concepts of these MgO-based structures.

Citation

Electrochemical Society Transactions

Volume

28

Issue

2

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

DOI Link

Keywords

spin electronics, magnetodynamics

Citation

Heindl, R. , Pufall, M. and Rippard, W. (2010), MgO Tunnel Barriers in Magnetic Nanostructures and Devices, Electrochemical Society Transactions, [online], https://doi.org/10.1149/1.3372602 (Accessed October 9, 2025)