Creation of Magnetic Tunnel Junctions with a Thermal Evaporator

Magnetic Tunnel Junctions have a definite usefulness towards the future of hard drive technology due to their sensitivity. These junctions are composed of a thin film sandwich of ferromagnet-insulator-ferromagnet and produce strange properties. Due to the quantum mechanical effect of tunneling, a voltage across the junction is affected by a magnetic field, and thusly can be used to measure a very sensitive field. Due to this sensitivity, the applications in the field of hard drives would lead to much higher data density, and as it is a property of spin, smaller power usage.

My research over the summer was dedicated to the production and testing of these Magnetic Tunnel Junctions. This included fixing and modifying the thermal evaporator, writing the targets with e-beam lithography on the Scanning Electron Microscope, evaporation, and probing the finished product. The evaporation was originally tested with gold for continuity, then aluminum for the junction, and then nickel for the magnetic properties.