Abstract
The growth behavior of MgO deposited on a Mg interlayer by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PE-ALD) was investigated to improve the MgO layer quality for magnetic tunneling junction (MTJ) applications. The Mg interlayer was inserted beneath the PE-ALD MgO film to prevent the oxidation of the bottom substrate layer. The chemical bonding status, elemental depth profile, and electron microscopy results for the PE-ALD Mg/MgO stack indicate that the Mg interlayer successfully blocked the oxidation of the substrate via its transformation to MgO. In addition, a change of the preferred orientation from (111) to (200) was observed in the X-ray diffraction pattern when the Mg interlayer was applied. This was attributed to the (200)-preferred orientation of the MgO formed through the oxidation of the Mg interlayer. The use of Mg interlayer is aim to prevent the degradation of the tunneling magneto-resistance properties by not only protecting the bottom layer (i.e., = CoFeB film in MTJs) from oxidation but also changing the preferred orientation from (111) to (200).
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 505-510 |
Number of pages | 6 |
Journal | Journal of Alloys and Compounds |
Volume | 747 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 May 30 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by an Incheon National University Research Grant in 2014. This research was supported by the MOTIE (Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy) ( 10080643 ) and KSRC (Korea Semiconductor Research Consortium) support program for the development of the future semiconductor device.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 Elsevier B.V.
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Mechanics of Materials
- Mechanical Engineering
- Metals and Alloys
- Materials Chemistry