Enhanced annealing stability of exchange biased pinned layer in magnetic tunnel junctions using a thin Ta/Ru/Ta/Ru underlayer for analog sensor applications.

摘要

MgO-based magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) are a key component technology for spintronic devices such as hard drive heads and magnetic random access memory (MRAM). Moreover, there is a great deal of interest in utilizing MTJs in analog sensor applications such as magnetic field sensors, current sensors, and angle sensors because of the large tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) effect of MTJs. In a new analog sensor application of MTJs, it has been reported that MTJs can also serve as a strain sensor by using a magnetostrictive sensing layer. These MTJ strain sensors can be applied to various kinds of physical sensors by combination with micro-electro-mechanical-system (MEMS) technology.