Mn-Based Perpendicular Magnetic Tunnel Junctions

The past few years, the quest to replace CoFeB-based magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs), has led to a focus on Mn-based chemically-ordered tetragonal materials of the L10 crystal structure. Although there is already a substantial investigation of Mn-based L10 thin films, and the materials show promising static magnetic properties, there is a significant under-performance with respect to tunneling magnetoresistance of MTJs employing such multilayered materials. A great deal of the effort to tackle this issue concerns interface engineering. In this article, a review of the recent activity on this topic is presented.