Observation of Self-heating Process in STT-MRAM and Its Implication in Device Operations

In this study, we first report the observation of the self- heating process in STT-MRAM using the electrical characterization technique with a temporal resolution better than 500 ps. The results confirm that at room temperature (300 K), the time constants for both heating and cooling during the write operation are smaller than 10 ns and the temperature increase of the Magnetic Tunnel Junction (MTJ) due to the self-heating effect (SHE) exceeds 75 K. Furthermore, the thermal resistance of the MTJ was experimentally extracted for the first time through electrical characterizations, which is crucial for accurately modeling the performance of MRAM.