Pulsed current switching of submicrometer MRAM cell

Thermally assisted switching of submicrometer magnetic tunnel junctions is investigated. It is found that writing can be done with pulses of the order of 1 ns. Switching current and switching current jitter are seen as strong functions of temperature, whereas both are only weakly dependent on current pulse duration. Micromagnetic modeling using a stochastic Landau-Lifschitz equation is used to understand thermal effects. The simulation predicts the observed switching current but does not explain the magnitude of the switching current jitter.