A programmable high voltage electrical switching analyzer for I-V characterization of phase change materials

Abstract

Ovonic Phase-Change Materials have found a renewed interestin the recent times owing to their applications in Non-Volatile RandomAccess Memories. In the present work, a cost-effective high voltageelectrical switching analyzer has been developed to enableinvestigations on the I-V characteristics and electrical switching ofbulk solids, which are necessary for identifying suitable materialsfor memory and other applications such as power control. The developedset up mainly consists of a PC based programmable High Voltage DCPower Supply which acts as an excitation source and a high speedDigital Storage Oscilloscope. For flexible control options, aGraphical User Interface has also been developed using LabVIEW-6i tocontrol the excitation source through the analog outputs of a dataacquisition card. Options are made in the system to sweep the outputvoltage from 45 to 1750 V or the output current in the range 0-45 mAwith resolutions of 1.5 V & 5 or 50 μA at variable rates. I-Vcharacteristics and switching behavior of the sample material areinstantaneously acquired on the storage oscilloscope and transferredto PC for post processing. The system can be used to investigate abroad range of materials and some typical results are presented toillustrate the capability of the system developed. The closed-loopstability of the system has also been confirmed by frequency responseplots.