Patent ID: 8575711

Claim:
A storage element comprising, stacked in a laminate direction: a storage layer configured to hold information by means of a magnetization state of a magnetic material, a pinned magnetization layer on one side of said storage layer, a tunnel insulation layer between said storage layer and said pinned magnetization layer, and a spin barrier layer in contact with another side of said storage layer that faces away from said pinned magnetization layer and said tunnel insulation layer, wherein, a direction of magnetization of said storage layer is changeable by means of injection of spin polarized electrons by passing a current in a lamination direction into the one side of said storage layer, so as to record information in said storage layer, the spin barrier layer is effective to restrain diffusion of said spin polarized electrons out of said storage layer, said tunnel insulation layer comprises magnesium oxide that is crystallized, said spin barrier layer comprises magnesium oxide and a non-magnetic metallic element diffused in the magnesium oxide, the non-magnetic metallic element being at least one selected from the group consisting of Ti, Ta, Zr, Hf, Nb, Cr, Mo, W, and V, and said spin barrier layer has a sufficiently low resistance as compared with the tunnel insulation layer to enable detection of a variation in a resistance of the storage element by the magnoresistance effect.