Interfacial Magnetic Anisotropy of Co90Zr10 on Pt Layer

Abstract

Spin Transfer Torque (STT) is of great interest in data writing scheme for the Magneto-resistive Random Access Memory (MRAM) using Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ). Scalability for high density memory requires ferromagnetic electrodes having the perpendicular magnetic easy axis. We investigated CoZr as the ferromagnetic electrode. It is observed that interfacial magnetic anisotropy is preferred perpendicular to the plane with thickness dependence on the interfaces with Pt layer. The anisotropy energy (K-u) with thickness dependence shows a change of magnetic-easy-axis direction from perpendicular to in-plane around 1.2 nm of CoZr. The interfacial anisotropy (K-i) as the directly related parameters to switching and thermal stability, are estimated as 1.64 erg/cm(2) from CoZr/Pt multilayered system.