Abstract
We investigated the evolution of magnetoresistance and magnetic property of tunneling magnetoresistive(TMR) device with microstructure and plasma oxidation time. TMR devices have potential applications for non volatile MRAM and high density HDD reading head. We prepared the tunnel magnetoresistance(TMR) devices of Ta($50{\AA}$)/NiFe($50{\AA}$)/IrMn($150{\AA}$)/CoFe($50{\AA}$)/Al($13{\AA}$)-O/CoFe($40{\AA}$)/FiFe($400{\AA}$)/Ta(($50{\AA}$) structure which have $100{\times}100\mu\textrm{m}^2$ junction area on $2.5{\times}2.5\textrm{cm}^2$ Si/$SiO_2$(($1000{\AA}$) substrates by an inductively coupled plasma(ICP) magnetron sputter. We fabricated the insulating layer using an ICP plasma oxidation method by with various oxidation time from 30 sec to 360 sec, and measured resistances and magnetoresistance(MR) ratios of TMR devices. We found that the oxidized sample for oxidation time of 80 sec showed the highest MR radio of 30.31 %, while the calculated value regarding inhomogeneous current effect indicated 25.18 %. We used transmission electron microscope(TEM) to investigate microstructural evolution of insulating layer. Comparing the cross-sectional TEM images at oxidation time of 150 sec and 360 sec, we found that the thickness and thickness variation of 360 sec-oxidized insulating layer became 30% and 40% larger than those of 150 sec-oxidized layer, repectively. Therefore, our results imply that increase of thickness variation with oxidation time may be one of the major treasons of the MR decrease.
