Study on the mechanism of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in Ta/CoFeB/MgO system**Project supported by the National Defense Advance Research Foundation (No. 9140A08XXXXXX0DZ106), the Basic Research Program of Ministry of Education, China (No. JY10000925005), the Scientific Research Program Funded by Shaanxi Provincial Education Department (No.11JK0912), the Scientific Research Foundation of Xi’an University of Science and Technology (No. 2010011), the Doctoral Research Startup

Abstract

The mechanism of perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in a MgO-based magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) has been studied in this article. By comparing the magnetic properties and elementary composition analysis for different CoFeB-based structures, such as Ta/CoFeB/MgO, Ta/CoFeB/Ta and Ru/CoFeB/MgO structures, it is found that a certain amount of Fe-oxide existing at the interface of CoFeB/MgO is helpful to enhance the PMA and the PMA is originated from the interface of CoFeB/MgO. In addition, Ta film plays an important role to enhance the PMA in Ta/CoFeB/MgO structure.