Modeling the amorphous state of phase change memory

Author

Shih, Y.H. ; Lee, M.H. ; Breitwisch, M. ; Cheek, R. ; Lung, H.L. ; Lam, C.

Author_Institution

IBM/Macronix PCRAM Joint Project, IBM T.J. Watson Res. Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA

fYear

2010

Firstpage

1092

Lastpage

1095

Abstract

A method based on Frenkel-Poole emission is proposed to model the I-V data of the amorphous state (high resistance state) in mushroom-type phase-change memory (PCM) devices. We found the I-V characteristics in the high resistance state are dominated by (i) the size of the amorphous GST (aGST) volume and (ii) the trap density of the amorphized GST material. Neither (i) nor (ii) can´t be resolved by the conventional read scheme, which uses a predetermined voltage to measure the PCM cells. We applied the analysis to study a cell with a thin phase change layer (25nm), the phenomena during RESET quenching time, and the resistance drifting at room temperature. With this new and powerful method, detailed changes inside the PCM cells are revealed.

Keywords

amorphous semiconductors; phase change memories; Frenkel-Poole emission; I-V characteristic; PCM device; RESET quenching time; aGST; amorphized GST material; amorphous state modeling; mushroom-type phase-change memory device; Data mining; Data models; Fitting; Phase change materials; Phase change memory; Resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Solid-State and Integrated Circuit Technology (ICSICT), 2010 10th IEEE International Conference on

Conference_Location

Shanghai

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-5797-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICSICT.2010.5667556

Filename

5667556