Effect of different seed layers on magnetic and transport properties of perpendicular anisotropic spin valves

Abstract

The effect of Ta, Cr and Cr90Ru10 seed layers on the magnetoelectronic properties of Co/Pd multilayers based pseudo-spin-valves (PSV) with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) was investigated. Giant magnetoresistance curves of the PSV show the degradation of PMA with thicker Cr and CrRu seed layers, but no degradation was observed for Ta up to 50 Å. It appears that after the deposition of an intial amorphous wetting layer up to 20 Å, Cr and CrRu seed layers start to form three-dimensional clusters that do not favor the fcc (111) orientation of the Pd seed layer and Co/Pd multilayers. This resulted in a significant reduction of the PMA for thicker Cr and CrRu seed layers, such that well-separated switching of the magnetic layers cannot be achieved. © 2006 IEEE.