• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea SD
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• v.41 no.8
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• pp.105-113
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• 2004

MRAM uses magneto-resistance material as a storage element, which stores cell data as a polarization of spin in a free magnetic layer. This magneto-resistance material has hysteresis, asteroid curve at the thermal variation, and R-V characteristics for switching the data. Therefore, a macro-model which can reproduce these characteristics is required for MRAM simulation. We propose a macro-model of TMR (Tunneling Magneto Resistance) that can reproduce all of these characteristics on HSPICE. Also we propose a novel sensing scheme, which generates reference resistance having the medium value, ( $R_{H}$+ $R_{L}$)/2, for a wide range of applied voltage and present simulation results based on the HSPICE macro-model of MTJ that we have developed.d.d.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.168-173
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• 2002

Electrostatic discharge characteristics were studied by connecting human body model (HBM) with tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) device in this research. TMR samples were converted into electrical equivalent circuit with HBM and it was simulated utilizing PSPICE. Discharge characteristics were observed by changing the component values of the junction model in this equivalent circuit. The results show that resistance and capacitance of the TMR junction were determinative components that dominate the sensitivity of the electrostatic discharge(ESD). Reducing the resistance oi the junction area and lead line is more profitable to increase the recording density rather than increasing the capacitance to improve the endurance for ESD events. Endurance at DC state was performed by checking breakdown and failure voltages for applied DC voltage. HBM voltage that a TMR device could endure was estimated when the DC failure voltage was regarded as the HBM failure voltage.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetics Society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.47-51
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• 2015

To achieve a high tunneling magneto resistance (TMR) of sputtered magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with an MgO barrier, the annealing process is indispensable. The structural and compositional changes as consequences of the annealing greatly affect the spin-dependent transport properties of MTJs. Higher TMR could be obtained for MTJs annealed at higher annealing temperature. The diffusion of Ru, Mn and/or Ta in the MTJs may occur during annealing process, which is known to be detrimental to spin-dependent tunneling effect. The rapid thermal annealing (RTA) process was used for annealing the MTJs with synthetic antiferromagnets. To suppress the diffusion of Mn, Ru and/or Ta in the MTJs, the process time and temperature of RTA were minutely controlled.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2010.02a
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• pp.448-448
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• 2010

Magnetic random access memory (MRAM) has made a prominent progress in memory performance and has brought a bright prospect for the next generation nonvolatile memory technologies due to its excellent advantages. Dry etching process of magnetic thin films is one of the important issues for the magnetic devices such as magnetic tunneling junctions (MTJs) based MRAM. CoFeB is a well-known soft ferromagnetic material, of particular interest for magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) and other devices based on tunneling magneto-resistance (TMR), such as spin-transfer-torque MRAM. One particular example is the CoFeB - MgO - CoFeB system, which has already been integrated in MRAM. In all of these applications, knowledge of control over the etching properties of CoFeB is crucial. Recently, transferring the pattern by using milling is a commonly used, although the redeposition of back-sputtered etch products on the sidewalls and the low etch rate of this method are main disadvantages. So the other method which has reported about much higher etch rates of >$50{\AA}/s$ for magnetic multi-layer structures using $Cl_2$/Ar plasmas is proposed. However, the chlorinated etch residues on the sidewalls of the etched features tend to severely corrode the magnetic material. Besides avoiding corrosion, during etching facets format the sidewalls of the mask due to physical sputtering of the mask material. Therefore, in this work, magnetic material such as CoFeB was etched in an ICP etching system using the gases which can be expected to form volatile metallo-organic compounds. As the gases, carbon monoxide (CO) and ammonia ($NH_3$) were used as etching gases to form carbonyl volatiles, and the etched features of CoFeB thin films under by Ta masking material were observed with electron microscopy to confirm etched resolution. And the etch conditions such as bias power, gas combination flow, process pressure, and source power were varied to find out and control the properties of magnetic layer during the process.