Micromagnetic principles in pseudo spin valve memory element design

Micromagnetic modeling of submicron size pseudo spin valve memory elements is presented. The storage mechanism of the memory system is proposed. For this mechanism, the switching field of the hard layer and the back switching field of the soft layer need to be well separated to ensure non-destructive read-out. As the size of the element is reduced, the back switching field of the soft layer greatly increases. It is found that this back switching field can be significantly reduced by introducing a transverse anisotropy field in the soft layer. It is also found that the existence of an antiparallel edge domain configuration in the memory element can significantly degrade the performance of the memory cell and cause instability.