The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 08, 2025
Filed:
Dec. 17, 2018
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Hsinchu, TW;
Jian Zhu, San Jose, CA (US);
Guenole Jan, San Jose, CA (US);
Yuan-Jen Lee, Fremont, CA (US);
Huanlong Liu, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Ru-Ying Tong, Los Gatos, CA (US);
Jodi Mari Iwata, San Carlos, CA (US);
Vignesh Sundar, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Luc Thomas, San Jose, CA (US);
Yu-Jen Wang, San Jose, CA (US);
Sahil Patel, Fremont, CA (US);
TAIWAN SEMICONDUCTOR MANUFACTURING COMPANY, LTD., Hsinchu, TW;
Abstract
A seed layer stack with a uniform top surface having a peak to peak roughness of 0.5 nm is formed by sputter depositing an amorphous layer on a smoothing layer such as Mg where the latter has a resputtering rate 2 to 30× that of the amorphous layer. The uppermost seed layer is NiW, NiMo, or one or more of NiCr, NiFeCr, and Hf while the bottommost seed layer is one or more of Ta, TaN, Zr, ZrN, Nb, NbN, Mo, MON, TIN, W, WN, and Ru. Accordingly, perpendicular magnetic anisotropy in an overlying magnetic layer is substantially maintained during high temperature processing up to 400° C. and is advantageous for magnetic tunnel junctions in embedded MRAMs, spintronic devices, or in read head sensors. The amorphous seed layer is SiN, TaN, or CoFeM where M is B or another element with a content that makes CoFeM amorphous as deposited.