Patent ID: 6979586

Claim:
A method of forming a thermally stable and easily switchable MTJ MRAM cell comprising: providing a substrate; forming a patterned composite bit line on said substrate, said bit line extending in a first direction in a horizontal plane and said bit line including a conducting layer and an adjacent soft magnetic layer (SAL); forming a multilayered magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ) element on said patterned bit line, said element including a magnetically pinned layer and a magnetically free layer which is vertically separated from said SAL by a vertical distance and is magnetostatically coupled to said SAL, said free layer acquiring, thereby, a magnetic interaction anisotropy; patterning said MTJ element to form a horizontal cross-sectional shape which has a horizontal dimension and is circular or elliptical with low aspect ratio less than 2; annealing said MTJ element to pin said pinned layer to an adjacent antiferromagnetic pinning layer; forming a write word line above said MTJ element, said write word line being in a horizontal plane and extending in a second direction which is perpendicular to said first direction and said write word line being electrically insulated from said MTJ element.