Electric field effects in low resistance CoFeB-MgO magnetic tunnel junctions with perpendicular anisotropy

We have investigated the electric field effects in low resistance perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) devices and found that the electric field can effectively reduce the coercivity (H-c) of free layer (FL) by 30% for a bias voltage V-b = -0.2 V. In addition, the bias field (H-b) on free layer is almost linearly dependent on V-b yet independent on the device size. The demonstrated V-b dependences of H-c and H-b in low resistance MTJ devices present the potential to extend the scalability of the electric field assisted spin transfer torque magnetic random access memory and improve its access speed. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3695168]