Patent ID: 8054588

Claim:
A tunneling magnetoresistive element comprising: a laminate that includes a pinned magnetic layer having a fixed magnetization direction, an insulating barrier layer, and a free magnetic layer having a variable magnetization direction according to an external magnetic field, laminated in that order from the bottom, wherein the free magnetic layer includes a plurality of soft magnetic sublayers, a nonmagnetic metal sublayer separating the soft magnetic sublayers, and an enhancement sublayer disposed between a first soft magnetic sublayer and the insulating barrier layer and having a spin polarizability higher than those of the soft magnetic sublayers, the first soft magnetic sublayer being the soft magnetic sublayer closest to the insulating barrier layer, the soft magnetic sublayers are magnetically coupled to each other and thereby have the same magnetization direction, and the laminate further includes a protective layer, as a top layer, that includes a first protective sublayer as a bottom sublayer and that is composed of at least one selected from the group consisting of Ru, Al, Ni—Fe—Cr, Ir—Mn, and Cr, wherein the first soft magnetic sublayer has an average thickness in a range from 15 to 70 angstrom, the enhancement sublayer has an average thickness in a range from 10 to 30 angstrom, and a total thickness of the average thickness of the enhancement sublayer and the average thickness of the first soft magnetic layer is 80 angstrom or less.