Title :
A study of heat generation and transport in tunnel junctions
Abstract :
The nascent field of spintronics has great potential to enable new types of information processing and storage devices and supplement conventional semiconductor devices. We report a study of nanoscale thermal phenomena in tunnel junctions, which are one of the key building blocks of spintronic devices. Measurements of the thermal resistance of tunnel barrier materials together with theoretical prediction of heat generation rate due to tunneling current enable development of thermal models for tunnel junctions. A nanoscale heating scheme exploiting thermal interface resistance at metal-barrier interfaces is proposed with possible applications in thermally assisted switching of magnetic random access memory (MRAM).
Keywords :
aluminium compounds; cobalt alloys; dielectric materials; dielectric thin films; ferromagnetic materials; heat transfer; iron alloys; magnetic multilayers; magnetic tunnelling; magnetoelectronics; thermal resistance; thermal resistance measurement; CoFe-AlO-CoFe; exploiting thermal interface resistance; heat generation; heat transport; information processing; magnetic random access memory; metal-barrier interfaces; nanoscale heating; nanoscale thermal effect; nascent field; semiconductor devices; spintronic devices; storage devices; thermal models; thermal resistance; thermally assisted switching; tunnel barrier materials; tunnel junctions; tunneling current; Current measurement; Electrical resistance measurement; Information processing; Magnetic field measurement; Magnetic materials; Magnetoelectronics; Nanoscale devices; Semiconductor devices; Semiconductor materials; Thermal resistance;
Conference_Titel :
Thermal and Thermomechanical Phenomena in Electronic Systems, 2004. ITHERM '04. The Ninth Intersociety Conference on
Print_ISBN :
0-7803-8357-5
DOI :
10.1109/ITHERM.2004.1318312
