Abstract
Increasing SET operation speed and reducing RESET operation energy have always been the innovation direction of phase change memory (PCM) technology. Here, we demonstrate that ∼87% and ∼42% reductions of RESET operation energy can be achieved on PCM cell based on stoichiometric Ti1Sb2Te5 alloy, compared with Ge2Sb2Te5 and non-stoichiometric Ti0.4Sb2Te3 based PCM cells at the same size, respectively. The Ti1Sb2Te5 based PCM cell also shows one order of magnitude faster SET operation speed compared to that of the Ge2Sb2Te5 based one. The enhancements may be caused by substantially increased concentration of TiTe2 nano-lamellae in crystalline Ti1Sb2Te5 phase. The highly electrical conduction and lowly thermal dissipation of the TiTe2 nano-lamellae play a major role in enhancing the thermal efficiency of the amorphization, prompting the low-energy RESET operation. Our work may inspire the interests to more thorough understanding and tailoring of the nature of the (TiTe2)n(Sb2Te3)m pseudobinary system which will be advantageous to realize high-speed and low-energy PCM applications.
Highlights
Increasing SET operation speed and reducing RESET operation energy have always been the innovation direction of phase change memory (PCM) technology
Non-volatile phase change memory (PCM), as one of the promising candidates, has great potential to serve as a storage class memory (SCM) to mitigate the widened performance mismatch between dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and non-volatile NAND Flash memory[1,2]
The RESET operation refers to an amorphization procedure which melts the c-phase and subsequently quenches it into a-phase by applying a short intense electrical pulse on the PCM cell
Summary
Ti0.4Sb2Te3 films were deposited by co-sputtering of pure Ti and Sb2Te3 targets. By adding an additional pure Te target, three-target co-sputtering technique was used to fabricate the Ti1Sb2Te5 films. TiTe2 films were obtained by co-sputtering of pure Ti and Te targets. For Sb2Te3 and Ge2Sb2Te5 films, respective pure alloy target was used for sputtering. The temperature-dependent sheet resistance changing trends of TiTe2, Sb2Te3, Ti0.4Sb2Te3, and Ti1Sb2Te5 films with the same 150 nm thickness were studied by Linkam LMP 95 hot stage. For real-time observation of structure transition in Ti1Sb2Te5 film, vacuum in situ X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurement with a 20 °C/min heating rate was performed on 300-nm-thick film (deposited on Si substrate at room temperature) using PANalytical X’Pert PRO diffractometer with a Cu Kα (λ= 0.15418 nm) radiation source. All the electrical measurements were performed by using the Keithley 2600C source meter (measuring cell resistance), the Tektronix AWG5002B pulse generator (generating voltage pulse with a minimum width of ∼6 ns), the homemade constant current driver (generating current pulse with a maximum magnitude of ∼1 0 mA), and the Tektronix 7054 digital phosphor oscilloscope (measuring transient voltage drop across the cell when current pulse is applied)
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