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Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
July 2013
Part 2
inMRAM
2013
In-plane magnetized STTRAM Reliability issues in STTRAM Out-of-plane magnetized STTRAM Downsize scalability of STTRAM
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
DW motion
Hx
Hy
STT-TAS
Precessional
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Writing 1
ON
jSTT 0
jSTT Vdd
ON
2e t jWR in plane = F h P
0M S 2 + 2 K 2
Field written
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
In the thermally activated regime: Ic0= extrapolated STT switching current at 1ns pulse width
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Courtesy Grandis
inMRAM
2013
~0.15-0.2V
~0.4-0.7V
~1.4-1.8V
70
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Key challenge is to achieve low write current and good retention at the same time
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
WRITABILITY
RETENTION
Increasing the retention at small size requires to increase Ms and or tF but penalty on write current. Importance to play on parameters such as Gilbert damping .
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
as low as possible Co: Ms=1400emu/cm3, CoFeB: Ms~600emu/cm3, (Co75Fe25 Ms But must remain compatible with sufficient thermal stability factor
-Thickness of the switching layer as small as possible But not too small because TMR amplitude degrades when magnetic electrode thinner than ~1.5nm and Gilbert damping increases -Current polarization
as large as possible (bccCoFe/MgO ~80%)
- Dual stacks with two antisymmetric pinned layers - Increase perpendicular anisotropy in the storage layer
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Gilbert Damping
Insulators: Yttrium iron garnet
Material Y3Fe5O12
Semi metals: Heusler alloy
Material NiMnSb
Metals:
Take advantage of the interfacial anisotropy at magnetic metal/oxide interface Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Lower RA
higher RA
Dual MTJ
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Idea: Hd and Hk of opposite sign, Hd tends to bring back the magnetization in-plane whereas Hk tends to pull it out-of-plane
Pd/Co
inMRAM
2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
STTRAM endurance
At each write event, the tunnel barrier is exposed to an electrical stress. How many cycles can it resist before electrical breakdown?
V ~0.5V
1.1nm
E ~ 5 108 V/m
TMR = 130 %
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
30ns
t variable
Accelerated conditions:
1.2Volt<V<1.5Volt
Example:
inMRAM
2013
t F (t ) = 1 exp
Extremely long endurance can be obtained in MTJ under specific working conditions. Different tunneling regime compared to standard CMOS working conditions Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2 inMRAM (thinner oxide, lower voltage, direct tunneling versus Fowler-Nordheim tunneling) 2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
o n
Dramatic increase in endurance to breakdown for an intermediate delay time ~80ns. Understood in terms of trapping/detrapping of electrons on traps inside the MgO barrier with escape~80ns and stress induced by electrostatic forces between trapped electrons and electrodes
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
MgO
CoFeB
- -+ +
- + +
Large stress generated on the barrier Screening charges appearing in the metallic electrodes
Need to minimize density of trapping sites in MgO: Oxygen vacancies in MgO Interfacial traps at BO/MgO interface if formation of BO. Dislocations in MgO due to lattice mismatch between MgO and CoFe (~4%)
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
a Fe = 2.87
inMRAM
2013
Reliability of the tunnel barrier endurance Dislocations as possible electron trapping sites
S.Yuasa et al, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 40 (2007) R337R354
Dislocations not good for reliability (trapping sites) and Dislocations not good for TMR amplitude (degradation of crystal symmetry)
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
a Fe = 2.87
a V = 3.10
2 a V = 4.38
1/f noise measurement may become a technique for characterizing the endurance of MTJ without stressing them
inMRAM
2013
In-plane magnetized STTRAM Reliability issues in STTRAM Out-of-plane magnetized STTRAM Downsize scalability of STTRAM
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
TMR (%)
DW motion
Hx
Hy
STT-TAS
Precessional
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
jc
in plane
M s2V 4e k B T = + k T h g (0) pA B
4e k B T jcperp = g pA h ( 0 )
More complex materials but lower jc expected thanks to direct proportionality between Jc and thermal stability
July 2013 Part 2
Thermal stability determined by inplane anisotropy (shape anisotropy) Simpler materials but additional penalty in jc due to out-of plane precession
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
TbFeCo
inMRAM
2013
4e k B T jcperp = g pA h ( 0 )
(K =
0 M s2 / 2 V k BT
A key point for p-STT MRAM is to be able to increase the perpendicular anisotropy without increasing the Gilbert damping
Difficulty: Large anisotropy often implies large spin-orbit coupling (provided for instance by Pt, Pd, Au) which yields large Gilbert damping . Solution found thanks to the existence of a large perpendicular anisotropy at magnetic metal/oxide interface
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
0.2
z
0.1
Underlayer/Co/Al
3'30
Very general phenomenon of perpendicular anisotropy observed at a wide variety of M/Ox interfaces with M=Co, CoFe, CoFeB and Ox= AlOx, MgO, TaOx, CrO2, Due to hybridization between Co dz and O sp orbitals O-pz
Mz
-0.1
-0.2
-8 -0.8
-6
-4 -0.4
-2
0 0
4 0.4
8 0.8
Co-dz
July 2013 Part 2
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
CoFe
3 Interfacial anisotropy energy at CoFe/MgO interface Ks~1.5erg/cm=1.5mJ/m as large as at Co/Pt interface despite weak spin-orbit coupling in Co, Fe, Mg, O
Very good correlation between max TMR and max PMA (tMg=1.2 nm) Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Co Mg
TMR
Optimum oxidation
O Co
>
TMR
Mg Co
O
hybridization between O sp orbitals and Co dz2 orbital combined with spin-orbit interaction yields the interfacial PMA
[A. Manchon et al., J.Appl.Phys. 104, 043914, 2008]
Co(Fe)-O interfacial bond formation influences both TMR amplitude and PMA
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Ks=2.93 10-3 J/m for two Fe/MgO interfaces i.e. 1.46 10-3 J/m per Fe/MgO interface Lower for under or over-oxidized interface
H.Yang, M.Chshiev, B.Dieny, Phys.Rev.B 2011.
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
inMRAM
2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
10ns 50ns
253 cells
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
2) Nucleation of a reversed domain at pillar edge and propagation of domain wall across the pillar (preferred at larger dimensions)
The chosen switching mechanism will be the one with lowest energy barrier
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Si-sub/Ta(5)/Ru(10)/Ta(5)/Co20Fe60B20(0.9)/MgO(0.9-1.0)/Co20Fe60B20(1.5)/Ta(5)/Ru(5)
Dnucleation~45nm
Jc MTJ area
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
nucleation area
July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
-To use magnetic material with large stiffness constant i.e. high Curie temperature such as Co rich CoFe alloys (Tcurie Co~1400K whereas Tcurie Fe~1043K)
-To use material with low magnetization (weaker demagnetizing field at edges of the pillar
-To avoid strond reduction of stiffness constant at the edges of the pillar due to etching damages
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
In-plane magnetized STTRAM Reliability issues in STTRAM Out-of-plane magnetized STTRAM Downsize scalability of STTRAM
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
How small can we go with p-STT MRAM? 1) From magnetic point of view
Magnetic stack optimization:
40 2 Large Ks
1nm
15 4 6 2 6 4
Additional polarizing layer to increase STT efficiency (US6950335B2, Fig.8 (2001)) and compensate stray field from reference layer
RA<2.m (reinforces STT and PMA
but low RA not to cancel TMR)
MgO
Co20Fe60B Co60Fe10Cr10B or Ti/Ta Co60Fe10Cr10B CoFeB Co20Fe60B
Low Ms material thanks to Cr addition (still low damping and large TMR) Fe rich CoFeB to optimize Ks and favor bcc formation
Storage layer
RA~2-5.m (provides the TMR)
1.2nm
15 2 40
MgO
Co20Fe60B Ti/Ta Co/Pd ML
Absorbs B away from MgO interface Help structural transition from fcc to bcc (Co2/Pd2)10 Provides large bulk PMA
K.Yakushiji et al, APL97, 232508(2010)
Reference layer
How small such a stack can be while insuring a 10 year retention? E = K eff V = [(K s1 + K s 2 ) 2M s2t ]R 2 = 70 K BT with (K s1 + K s 2 ) = 2.9erg / cm and M s = 600emu / cm3 Min diameter = 10nm still keeping >70
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
Optimal structure: (Co/Pt) or (Co/Pd) ordered ML for reference and additional polarizing layers
Post-annealing stability of up to 370 C, provide a very large PMA Ku~ 39.106 ergs/cm3 .
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
How small can we go with p-STT MRAM? 2) From electrical point of view
The total current to write by STT is related to the thermal stability factor by
= damping
P = polarization A = Area g(0)~1
4e k B T jcperp = h g (0) pA
4e perp I write = k BT . h g ( 0) P
For 1Gbit chip, 1 FIT in 10years with proba<10-4, must be larger than 70. With simple MTJ: P (spin-polarisation of the current)=80% =0.01 (thanks to interfacial anisotropy) If transistor can deliver 900A/m 1.3mA/m
Iwrite=25A
With dual MTJ: STT efficiency can be doubled so that Iwrite drops to 13A If transistor can deliver 900A/m min transistor width of 14nm. 1.3mA/m min transistor width of 10nm. To get to smaller dimensions , other tricks are required such as Thermally Assisted Writing
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr July 2013 Part 2
inMRAM
2013
IEDM2011, paper24.1
inMRAM
2013
IEDM2011, paper24.1
Asymmetry likely due to stray field from reference layer Distribution from dot to dot not reported
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
IBE : Avoid redeposition of metallic species on the side of the barrier. Amorphization of MgO may take place at edges locally changing RA and TMR (may be cured by post-etching anneals)
Ta MgO PtMn Ta
Tapering can affect the magnetic properties (not a strong effect) Alloying at edges may affect anisotropy and exchange stiffness (a reduction by 2 orders of magnitude of exchange stiffness is acceptable).
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Post-etching annealing
Post etching anneal may help curing the damages at edges. Encapsulation required. Need to recrystallize the barrier and neighboring electrodes around the edges and restaure the strong interfacial anisotropy, the right RA and TMR amplitude. Proposed structure should withstand high annealing at least up to T ~370C:
40 2 15 4 6 2 6 4
(Co2/Pd2) ML
MgO
Fe or Fe rich CoFeB Co60Fe10Cr10B Ti/Ta Co60Fe10Cr10B Fe or Fe rich CoFeB
Thanks to the insertion between two MgO barriers, should be quite thermally stable upon annealing
MgO
15 2 40
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Still under development. See tutorial on MRAM processing (JP Nozieres) . Main issues: Avoid corrosion of the magnetic materials Various types of materials requiring different etch gas chemistry
100nm MTJ pillar etched by RIE
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013
Bernard.Dieny@cea.fr
inMRAM
2013