Designing a Method for Measuring Magnetoresistance of Nanostructures

The ultimate intent of this research program is to produce nanosized magnetic tunneling junctions, and to study the physical properties of such devices. The physical phenomena of nanosized tunneling junctions are significantly different than that of currently popular micro-sized junctions. There...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Scherer, Donald
Format: Others
Published: ScholarWorks@UNO 2006
Subjects:
Online Access:http://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/374
http://scholarworks.uno.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1395&context=td
Description
Summary:The ultimate intent of this research program is to produce nanosized magnetic tunneling junctions, and to study the physical properties of such devices. The physical phenomena of nanosized tunneling junctions are significantly different than that of currently popular micro-sized junctions. There is a considerable amount of work that must be done prior to producing these new junctions to ensure that good measurements can be carried out once the structures have been built. This thesis describes the efforts taken to design a measurement platform that will accurately measure tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) in nanosized Magneto-tunneling Junctions (MTJ). The testing done with this system at various stages throughout the design and testing process confirm the expectations for the performance of the system. Voltage-current measurements can be performed on objects ranging from a few nanometers in size to micrometer sized. Traditional micro-sized MTJs have not been excluded in this design.