Abstract
Abstract In this experiment, we used RE-TM materials to prepare magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJ) with perpendicular anisotropy. These RE-TM based p-MTJ could suppress the generation of vortex structures at the edge of the free layers. Therefore, the p-MTJs could be further scaled down to meet the requirement of future generation of magnetic random access memory (MRAM). The experiment procedure was as follows: First, we presented the complete fabrication processes of p-MTJs, including optimization of AlOX tunneling barriers in conventional MTJs, composition tuning of RE-TM magnetic layers, and finally the preparation of full stacks of p-MTJs. Next, we analyzed the p-MTJ qualities by vibration sample magnetometer (VSM), magneto-optical Kerr effect (MOKE), four-point probe technique, transmission electron microscope (TEM) and atomic force microscope (AFM) etc.. Finally, we introduced the thermally assisted writing technique into p-MTJ to reduce the switching field of the free layers. We discussed the potential and the possibility of thermally-assisted writing p-MTJ in the end of this dissertation.