Patent ID: 7193259

Claim:
A thermally written magnetic memory device, comprising: a plurality of first electrodes; a plurality of second electrodes; and a plurality of thermally written tunnel junction devices, each thermally written tunnel junction device including a reference layer in electrical communication with one of the first electrodes and including a pinned orientation of magnetization, a data layer in electrical communication with one of the second electrodes and including an alterable orientation of magnetization for storing a data, the data layer including a width dimension of the data layer that is smaller than a length dimension of the data layer so that a shape anisotropy of the data layer is sufficiently large enough to make the data layer super-paramagnetically stable at a read temperature, the data layer has a high coercivity at a read temperature and the data is non-volatile at the read temperature, and the data layer has a low coercivity at a write temperature that is higher than the read temperature and the data can be written to the data layer at the write temperature, and a spacer layer in contact with the data layer and the reference layer.