Strongly suppressed 1/f noise and enhanced magnetoresistance in epitaxial Fe–V/MgO/Fe magnetic tunnel junctions

D. Herranz , Frédéric Bonell (1) , A. Gomez-Ibarlucea , S. Andrieu , F. Montaigne , R. Villar1 , C. Tiusan , F. G. Aliev , R. Villar

1 IJL - Institut Jean Lamour

Alloying Fe electrodes with V, through reduced FeV/MgO interface mismatch in epitaxial magnetic tunnel junctions with MgO barriers, notably suppresses both nonmagnetic (parallel) and magnetic (antiparallel) state 1/f noise and enhances tunnelling magnetoresistance (TMR). A comparative study of the room temperature electron transport and low frequency noise in Fe1-xVx/MgO/Fe and Fe/MgO/Fe1-xVx MTJs with 0 <= x <= 0.25 reveals that V doping of the bottom electrode for x < 0.1 reduces in nearly 2 orders of magnitude the normalized nonmagnetic and magnetic 1/f noise. We attribute the enhanced TMR and suppressed 1/f noise to strongly reduced misfit and dislocation density.

Domaines: Physique [physics]

D. Herranz, Frédéric Bonell, A. Gomez-Ibarlucea, S. Andrieu, F. Montaigne, et al.. Strongly suppressed 1/f noise and enhanced magnetoresistance in epitaxial Fe–V/MgO/Fe magnetic tunnel junctions. Applied Physics Letters, 2010, 96 (20), pp.202501. ⟨10.1063/1.3430064⟩. ⟨hal-03011893⟩