UCLA

Electric-field assisted writing of magnetic memory that exploits the voltage-controlled magnetic anisotropy (VCMA) effect offers a great potential for high density and low power applications. Magnetoelectric Random Access Memory (MeRAM) has been investigated due to its lower switching current, compared with traditional current-controlled devices utilizing spin transfer torque (STT) or spin-orbit torque (SOT) for magnetization switching. It is of great promise to integrate MeRAM into the advanced CMOS back-end-of-line (BEOL) processes for on-chip embedded applications, and enable non-volatile electronic systems with low static power dissipation and instant-on operation capability.

In this thesis, different heavy metal|ferromagnet|insulator-based structures are grown by magnetron sputtering to improve the VCMA effect over the traditional Ta|CoFeB|MgO-based structures. We also established an accurate measurement technique for VCMA characterization. An improved thermal annealing stability of VCMA over 400?C is achieved in Mo|CoFeB|MgO-based structures. In addition, we observed a weak CoFeB thickness dependence of both VCMA coefficient and interfacial perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) in both Ta|CoFeB|MgO and Mo|CoFeB|MgO-based structures.