A novel inspection and annealing procedure to rejuvenate phase change memory from cycling-induced degradations for storage class memory applications

Author

Khwa, W.S. ; Wu, J.Y. ; Su, T.H. ; Li, H.P. ; BrightSky, M. ; Wang, T.Y. ; Hsu, T.H. ; Du, P.Y. ; Kim, S. ; Chien, W.C. ; Cheng, H.Y. ; Cheek, R. ; Lai, E.K. ; Zhu, Y. ; Lee, M.H. ; Chang, M.F. ; Lung, H.L. ; Lam, C.

Author_Institution

IBM/Macronix Joint PCRAM Project, Macronix Int. Co., Ltd., Hsinchu, Taiwan

fYear

2014

Abstract

A novel Cycle Alarm Point (CAP) inspection is proposed to monitor PCM cycling degradation. The degradation appears in two stages - (1) right shift of R-I during moderate cycling degradation, and (2) left shift of R-I when cycling damage is severe. We further propose an In-Situ-Self-Anneal (ISSA) procedure, such that once a CAP signal is detected, the annealing procedure is issued to rejuvenate the cells. We demonstrate, for the first time, PCM cycling degradation can be recovered repeatedly. This opens a new window to extend PCM endurance and reliability for storage class memory (SCM) applications.

Keywords

annealing; inspection; integrated circuit reliability; phase change memories; CAP inspection; CAP signal; ISSA procedure; PCM cycling degradation; PCM endurance; R-I left shift; R-I right shift; SCM reliability; cycle alarm point inspection; cycling damage; cycling-induced degradations; in-situ-self-anneal procedure; phase change memory; storage class memory reliability; Annealing; Degradation; Failure analysis; Lungs; Phase change materials; Phase change memory; Resistance;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM), 2014 IEEE International

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2014.7047138

Filename

7047138