Endurance Improvement of Ge2Sb2Te5-Based Phase Change Memory

Author

Chen, Chieh-Fang ; Schrott, A. ; Lee, M.H. ; Raoux, S. ; Shih, Y.H. ; Breitwisch, M. ; Baumann, F.H. ; Lai, E.K. ; Shaw, T.M. ; Flaitz, P. ; Cheek, R. ; Joseph, E.A. ; Chen, S.-H. ; Rajendran, B. ; Lung, H.L. ; Lam, C.

Author_Institution

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

fYear

2009

fDate

10-14 May 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

We describe a cycling failure mode in Ge₂Sb₂Te₅-based phase change memory, based on density difference of GST in different phases and the SET/RESET thermal operations. Voids that develop and merge with each other within GST programming volume after cycling eventually lead to cell failure. By adding suitable amount of doping material into GST, we are able to delay this void formation process and to significantly improve the cell endurance to more than 10⁹ cycles.

Keywords

antimony compounds; failure analysis; germanium compounds; integrated circuit reliability; phase change memories; thermal analysis; GST programming volume; Ge₂Sb₂Te₅; SET-RESET thermal operation; cell endurance; cycling failure mode; doping material; phase change memory; Conducting materials; Crystalline materials; Delay; Doping; FCC; Phase change materials; Phase change memory; Phase change random access memory; Thermal conductivity; Thermal stresses;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Memory Workshop, 2009. IMW '09. IEEE International

Conference_Location

Monterey, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3762-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IMW.2009.5090589

Filename

5090589