Enhancing the interfacial perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and tunnel magnetoresistance by inserting an ultrathin LiF layer at an Fe/MgO interface

Abstract Perpendicular magnetic anisotropy (PMA) is becoming increasingly important in spintronics research, especially for high-density magnetoresistive random access memories (MRAMs). The PMA induced at an Fe/MgO interface widely used tunnel junctions. Here, we propose inserting ultrathin LiF layer the epitaxial junction. With a 0.3 nm-thick layer, large intrinsic energy, K i ,0 , of 2.8 mJ/m 2 was achieved. We also found that LiF/MgO bilayer tunneling barrier exhibited magnetoresistance (TMR) effect, suggesting coherent spin-dependent process maintained layer. Atomic-scale engineering using fluoride can further improve and TMR properties spintronic devices.