Electrothermal simulation of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT)-based phase change memory for 3-DICs

In this paper, vertically aligned single-walled carbon nanotube (SWCNT) contacted phase change memories are modelled and simulated by three-dimensional time-dependent finite element method (TDFEM). Thermal coupling between adjacent cells, which can cause current leakage and reliability degradation, is studied for different variations in space caused by fabrication process. In particular, thermal response to an ESD pulse is characterized by using our in-house developed TDFEM algorithm, which shows ESD may change the state of phase change memory and result in error programming.