Spins, Bits, and Flips: Essentials for High-Density Magnetic Random-Access Memory

Date

Jun 23, 2022

Time

10:00 AM - 11:00 AM

Speaker

Dr. Tiffany S. Santos

Affiliation

Western Digital Research Center, Western Digital Corporation, San Jose, CA, USA

Language

en

Main Topic

Materialien

Host

Kristina Krummer

Description

IEEE Magnetics Society Distinguished Lecture 2022 In this talk, I will describe the seminal discoveries that enabled magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) for pervasive use in hard disk drives, MRAM, and magnetic sensors, such as the discovery of tunnel magnetoresistance (TMR) at room temperature, the invention of spin-transfer torque as the means to flip magnetization without a magnetic field, and the prediction and realization of high TMR using MgO tunnel barriers. As the demand for faster and higher density memory persists, still more breakthroughs are needed for MTJs contained in device pillars (or bits) just tens of nanometers in diameter. These advances require tuning of material properties at the atomic scale as well as across arrays of millions of bits in a memory chip. I will describe the magnetic properties of MTJs that are essential for high-performance MRAM, including perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, damping parameter, exchange constant, thermal stability factor, and TMR, and how to engineer these properties to deliver high spin-transfer torque efficiency and high data retention in spin-transfer torque MRAM devices.

Links

• Seminars at the IFW

Last modified: Apr 12, 2022, 12:07:14 AM