Hall effect-induced acceleration of electromigration failures in spin valve multilayers under magnetic field

Abstract

It was observed that electromigration (EM)-induced failures in spin valve multilayers were severely accelerated by an externally applied magnetic field. The theoretical and experimental analysis results confirmed that Hall effect-induced Lorentz force applied to the perpendicular-to-the-film-plane direction is primarily responsible for the severe acceleration of the EM failures due to its dominant contribution to abruptly increasing local temperature and current density. The proposed failure model and the theoretical calculations were demonstrated to agree well with the experimental observations. © 2011 American Institute of Physics.