Abstract
Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) is employed to characterize ex situ the interface between the bottom Fe (001) electrode and MgO (001) barrier in a magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) deposited by molecular beam epitaxy. High resolution TEM images are compared with multislice-based simulations of oxidized and sharp interfaces to conclude that at least the part of the interface is not oxidized. In addition, the spacing between the Fe and O layers at the interface is measured and found to be comparable with theoretical calculations in the literature of sharp interfaces. This result offers a methodology to characterize the interface structure of MTJs, which is important to determine the magneto-transport properties of the device.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 2779-2781 |
| Number of pages | 3 |
| Journal | IEEE Transactions on Magnetics |
| Volume | 43 |
| Issue number | 6 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Jun 2007 |
Funding
This work was supported by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Science Research Council. The authors are grateful to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council for financial support and discussion with Dr. V. Lazarov, Dr. S.-Y. Choi, Dr. R. Schaeublin, Dr. J. Sloan, and Prof. A. I. Kirkland. A. K. Petford-Long acknowledges UChicago Argonne, LLC, Operator of Argonne National Laboratory (“Argonne”). Argonne, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, is operated under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Keywords
- Electron microscopy
- Epitaxial growth
- Interface phenomena
- Oxidation
- Tunnel junction
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering