International Business Machines Corporation

Other

Philip Edward Batson

David William Abraham

William Joseph Gallagher

Philip Louis Trouilloud

John Casimir Slonczewski

Stuart P Parkin

Yun Yu Wang

Rajarao Jammy

Philip L Flaitz

Hua Shen

In accordance with the present invention, a method for forming a crystalline silicon nitride layer, includes the steps of providing a crystalline silicon substrate with an exposed surface, precleaning the exposed surface by employing a hydrogen prebake and exposing the exposed surface to nitrogen to form a crystalline silicon nitride layer. Also, a trench capacitor, in accordance with the present invention, includes a crystalline silicon substrate including deep trenches having surface substantially free of native oxide. A dielectric stack, including a crystalline silicon nitride layer, is formed on the sidewalls of the trenches. The dielectric stack forms a node dielectric between electrodes of the trench capacitor.

Method for forming crystalline silicon nitride

Magnetoresistive devices are disclosed which include a changeable magnetic region within which at least two magnetic states can be imposed. Upon magnetoresistive electrical interaction with the device, the relative orientation of the magnetic states of the changeable magnetic region, and a proximate reference magnetic region, can be sensed thereby providing a binary data storage capability. The present invention limits the electrical interaction to only a preferred portion of the changeable magnetic region, e.g., the portion within which the two magnetic states can be dependably predicted to be substantially uniform, and opposite of one another. Structures for limiting the electrical interaction to this preferred portion of the changeable magnetic region are disclosed, and include smaller interaction regions, and alternating areas of insulation and conductive, interaction regions, disposed proximate the changeable magnetic region. The principles of the present invention can be applied to magnetic random access memory (&ldquo;MRAM&rdquo;) arrays, which employ giant magnetoresistive (&ldquo;GMR&rdquo;) cells, or magnetic tunnel junction (&ldquo;MTJ&rdquo;) cells, at the intersections of bitlines and wordlines, and also to magnetic sensors such as magnetic data storage devices having access elements used to access data on a magnetic data storage medium.

Limiting magnetoresistive electrical interaction to a preferred portion of a magnetic region in magnetic devices

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Katonah, NY, United States of America

Philip Edward Batson