Thermally assisted-writing giant magnetoresistance with perpendicular magnetization

Abstract

Giant magnetoresistance (GMR) samples composed of TbCoCoCuCoTbFeCo layers were fabricated with a GMR ratio of 4% and magnetization perpendicular to the film planes. A large coercivity (12 kOe) of the free layer (TbCoCo) guarantees the thermal stability at room temperature. A lower Curie temperature of the free layer than that of the pinned layer (CoTbFeCo) enables us to switch the magnetization of the free layer by thermally assisted writing while that of the pinned layer keeps unchanged at the temperatures between Curie temperatures of two layers. When the sample was heated up to 180 °C, the required switching field was only 10 Oe. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.