Journal
APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS
Volume 95, Issue 24, Pages -Publisher
AMER INST PHYSICS
DOI: 10.1063/1.3273397
Keywords
amorphous magnetic materials; annealing; boron alloys; cobalt alloys; crystallisation; electrodes; high-temperature effects; iron alloys; magnesium compounds; magnetic thin films; magnetic tunnelling; transmission electron microscopy; X-ray diffraction
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Funding
- DOE [DE-FG02-07ER46374, DE-AC02-98CH10886]
- NSF [DMR0504158]
- ONR [N00014-09-1-0177]
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We report the crystallization study of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions using in-situ, time-resolved synchrotron-based x-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. It was found that the crystallization of amorphous CoFeB electrodes occurs on a time scale of seconds during the postgrowth high temperature annealing. The crystallization can be well fit by the Johnson-Mehl-Avrami model and the effective activation energy of the process was determined to be 150 kJ/mol. The solid-state epitaxy mode of CoFeB was found to involve separate crystallization at different locations followed by subsequent merging of small grains, instead of layer-by-layer growth of CoFeB film along the MgO template.
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