Perpendicular MTJ element having a cube-textured reference layer and methods of making the same

A method of making a perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (pMTJ) element, comprising:

• forming a magnetic pinning structure, wherein forming the magnetic pinning structure comprises:
• forming a perpendicular synthetic antiferromagnetic (pSAF) stack,
• forming an oxide buffer (OB) layer on top of the pSAF stack, and
• forming a cube-textured reference layer, wherein forming the cube-textured reference layer comprises depositing a texture starting (TS) layer on top of the oxide buffer layer;
• depositing a tunnel barrier layer on top of the magnetic pinning structure;
• depositing a magnetic free layer on top of the tunnel barrier layer and having a magnetic anisotropy perpendicular to a film surface and having a variable magnetization direction;
• and
• further comprising:
• performing a tensile strain quenching (TSQ) process immediately after at least one of depositing the TS layer and depositing the tunnel barrier layer,
• wherein performing said TSQ process induces a BCC or L10 superlattice structure and a (100) crystal texture in the TS layer.