摘要 |
A magnetoresistive element includes an underlying layer having a cubic or tetragonal crystal structure oriented in a (001) plane, a first magnetic layer provided on the underlying layer, having perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, and having an fct structure oriented in a (001) plane, a non-magnetic layer provided on the first magnetic layer, and a second magnetic layer provided on the non-magnetic layer, and having perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. An in-plane lattice constant a1 of the underlying layer and an in-plane lattice constant a2 of the first magnetic layer satisfy the following equation in which b is a magnitude of Burgers vector of the first magnetic layer, &ngr; is an elastic modulus of the first magnetic layer, and hc is a thickness of the first magnetic layer. |√{square root over (2)}×a1/2−a2|/a2<b×{ln (hc/b)+1}/{2&pgr;×hc×(1+&ngr;)}. |