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US 7,352,543 B2Granted
Ta based bilayer seed for IrMn CPP spin valve
AssigneeHeadway Technologies, Inc.
InventorsMin Li, Kunliang Zhang, Chyu-Jiuh Torng, Yu-Hsia Chen
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Abstract
The effectiveness of an IrMn pinning layer in a CPP GMR device at high switching fields has been improved by replacing the conventional single layer seed by a layer of tantalum and either ruthenium or copper. The tantalum serves to cancel out the crystallographic influence of underlying layers while the ruthenium or copper provide a suitable base on which to grow the IrMn layer.
Claims12
A CPP GMR device, comprising:
- a substrate on which is a layer of Ta having a thickness between 20 and 70 Angstroms;
- on said Ta layer, a layer of Ru having a thickness of between 10 and 50 Angstroms;
- on said Ru layer a pinning layer of IrMn having a thickness between about 50 and 100 Angstroms;
- on said pinning layer, a pinned layer;
- a non magnetic spacer layer on said pinned layer;
- on said non magnetic spacer layer, a free layer;
- on said free layer, a capping layer;
- and
- said CPP GMR device having an Rhin value of at least 90% as well as a resistance-area product of at most 0.4 ohm·m2.
6 more elements
A CPP GMR device, comprising:
- a substrate on which is a layer of Ta having a thickness between 20 and 70 Angstroms;
- on said Ta layer, a layer of Cu having a thickness of between 10 and 50 Angstroms;
- on said Cu layer, a pinning layer of IrMn having a thickness between about 50 and 100 Angstroms;
- on said pinning layer, a pinned layer;
- a non magnetic spacer layer on said pinned layer;
- on said non magnetic spacer layer, a free layer;
- on said free layer, a capping layer;
- and
- said CPP GMR device having an Rhin value of at least 90% as well as a GMR ratio of at least 5%.
6 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.