Inelastic Electron Tunneling Spectroscopy for Ferromagnetic Material Nanometer-Thin Film Junction

Description

Conductor-insulator-conductor junctions with insulator of nano-size thickness have generated many potential applications in scientific and electronic fields. Of these, magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) with ferromagnetic electrodes has become one of the most successful technologies applied in hard-disk-drive recording. A typical device consists of ferromagnetic thin films in which the magnetization alignments of films can be changed by an external magnetic field. This MTJ element has also been applied in sensor technology.In this project, a cryogenic (low temperature) electrical characterization technique known as inelastic electron tunneling spectroscopy is proposed to study the interface properties of the MTJ. This study can broaden the understanding of the MTJ structure and process dependence, and would result in the improvement in MTJ fabrication technology applicable to magnetic recording, sensor applications and magnetoresistive random access memory (MRAM) technology.The industrial partner, SAE Magnetics (HK) Limited (SAE), is the largest independent manufacturer of magnetic recording head for hard disk drives in 2007. As MTJ is seen by SAE as the key solution to retrieving the recorded high-density data in hard-disk drives, it has particular interest in pursuing the advanced research works related to the MTJ technology for their current and future products.