A finite-element thermoelectric model for phase-change memory devices

In this article, we present a finite-element method (FEM)-based thermo-electric model to accurately capture the characteristics of phase-change memory devices. The individual thermoelectric heating components are separated to obtain a detailed understanding of thermal transport in the device. This work is different from other exciting modeling work on thermoelectrics in that, for the first time, it compares the modeling results with experimental measurements obtained over a range of ambient temperatures, thereby validating the accuracy of the proposed model.