ALCVD AlO/sub x/ barrier layers for magnetic tunnel junction applications

Summary form only given. The self-limiting growth nature of atomic layer chemical vapor deposition (ALCVD) allows depositions of very thin dielectric layers with excellent conformality, uniformity and atomic level thickness control. The challenge to implement the technology to thin oxide gap and tunnel barrier applications in recording heads and magnetic random access memory is the control in surface chemistry and process conditions, which are not necessarily compatible to the processing of magnetic materials and may therefore cause significant degradation in magnetic properties and device performance. In this paper, we evaluate the feasibility of ultrathin ALCVD AlO/sub x/ layers for tunnel barrier applications.