Saturation of VCMA in out-of-plane magnetized CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions

M. Williamson, M. De Rozieres, H. Almasi, X. Chao, W. Wang, J. P. Wang, M. Tsoi

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

2 Scopus citations

Abstract

Voltage controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) currently attracts considerable attention as a novel method to control and manipulate magnetic moments in high-speed and low-power spintronic applications based on magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). In our experiments, we use ferromagnetic resonance (FMR) to study and quantify VCMA in out-of-plane magnetized CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB MTJ pillars. FMR is excited by applying a microwave current and detected via a small rectified voltage which develops across MTJ at resonance. The VCMA effective field can be extracted from the measured resonance field and was found to vary as a function of electrical bias applied to MTJ. At low applied biases, we observe a linear shift of the VCMA field as a function of the applied voltage which is consistent with the VCMA picture based on the bias-induced electron migration across the MgO/CoFeB interface. At higher biases, both positive and negative, we observe a deviation from the linear behavior which may indicate a saturation of the VCMA effect. These results are important for the design of MTJ-based applications.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number055912
JournalAIP Advances
Volume8
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 1 2018

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This work was supported in part by C-SPIN, one of six centers of STARnet, a Semiconductor Research Corporation program, sponsored by MARCO and DARPA.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Author(s).

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