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Science 12 November 1999:
Vol. 286. no. 5443, p. 1253
DOI: 10.1126/science.286.5443.1253e
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This Week in Science

Figure 1
Magnetic tunnel junctions can provide "nonvolatile" dynamic memory elements that remain in their on or off state even when power is lost. In spin-dependent magnetic tunnel junctions, which consist of a magnetically hard reference layer and a switchable magnetically soft layer, magnetization in the hard reference layer decays with increasing switching cycles, despite the magnetic fields being considerably smaller than those required to switch the entire hard layer. McCartney et al. (p. 1337), using a magnetic imaging technique, identified large fringing magnetic fields that developed at the domain walls of the magnetically soft layer as the source of the decay of the magnetization. This finding should allow for the design of better magnetic memories.




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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)