Impact of ambient temperature on the switching of voltage-controlled perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction

Abstract

Voltage control of the magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effect enables a voltage-mediated magnetization switching mechanism for lower-power applications. In this work, we experimentally investigate the characteristics of VCMA-induced switching and we observe a clear decrease in the critical switching voltage (Vc) at elevated temperatures. A 50% reduction in Vc is quantified when increasing the ambient temperature (T) from 300 K to 360 K. Such a T-dependence of Vc is well explained with the variations of saturation magnetization (MS), interfacial anisotropy (Ki), and VCMA coefficient (ξ). In addition, the dependences of these properties on temperature are well fitted and explained with the power law of MS(T). Our findings on the T-dependent magnetic and switching characteristics of VCMA are of technological importance for implementing VCMA in magnetic random access memory (MRAM) applications.