Effect of Edge Roughness on resistance and switching voltage of Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

• Published in: IEEE electron device letters Vol. 44; no. 5; p. 1
• Main Authors: Pandey, Rachit R., Dutta, Sutapa, Mendonca, Heston A., Tulapurkar, Ashwin A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-05-2023; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Approximation; Aspect ratio; Circles (geometry); circular edge roughness; Correlation; Eigenvalues; Electric potential; Electrical junctions; Green's functions; Junctions; Magnetic properties; Magnetic Tunnel Junction; Magnetic tunneling; non-equilibrium Green’s function; Quantum confinement; Random access memory; Resistance; Roughness; Shape; spin transfer torque; Switches; Switching; Threshold voltage; Transport properties; Tunnel junctions; Voltage
• ISSN: 0741-3106; 1558-0563
• DOI: 10.1109/LED.2023.3254811

We investigate the impact of edge roughness on the electrical transport properties of magnetic tunnel junctions using non-equilibrium Green's function formalism. We have modeled edge roughness as a stochastic variation in the cross-sectional profile of magnetic tunnel junction characterized by the stretched exponential decay of the correlation function. The stochastic variation in the shape and size changes the transverse energy mode profile and gives rise to variations in the resistance and switching voltage of the magnetic tunnel junction. We find that the variations are larger as the magnetic tunnel junction size is scaled down due to the quantum confinement effect. A model is proposed for the efficient calculation of edge roughness effects by approximating the cross-sectional geometry to a circle with the same cross-sectional area. Further improvement can be obtained by approximating the cross-sectional area to an ellipse with an aspect ratio determined by the first transverse eigenvalue corresponding to the 2D cross-section. These results would be useful for designing reliable spin transfer torque-magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) with ultra-small magnetic tunnel junctions.