A semiconductor structure includes a seed layer and a multilayer stack of one or more multilayers disposed over the seed layer, each of the one or more multilayers including a magnetic layer and an additional layer disposed over a top surface of the magnetic layer. The additional layer includes a non-magnetic material and a dusting material. The multilayer stack provides a reference layer of a perpendicular magnetic tunnel junction stack. The magnetic layer may be formed of cobalt, the non-magnetic material may be at least one of iridium and rhodium, and the dusting material may be at least one of platinum, ruthenium, palladium, gold and nickel.