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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*
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
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Abstract

The effect of disorder caused by MeV heavy ionirradiation on the tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) of magnetictunnel junctions is investigated. Two types of tunnel junctions,viz. Co/Al2O3/Ni80Fe20 and Co/Gd-dopedAl2O3/Ni80Fe20 are studied. Upon 70 MeV Si ionirradiation at a fluence of $5\times10^{11}$  ions/cm2, the undopedjunctions show relatively small but irreversible change, while theGd-doped junctions show a huge reduction, in TMR. In both casesjunctions were completely destroyed by 200 MeV Ag ion irradiationat a fluence of $1 \times 10^{11}$ ions/cm2. The results areattributed to the modification of the barrier and the neighboringinterfaces caused by the high energy density deposited by incidentions.

Keywords

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© EDP Sciences, 2005

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