Rhenium doped Sb2Te phase change material with ultrahigh thermal stability and high speed

Abstract

Sb2Te material is an important base material for phase change memory or optical data storage, but the poor amorphous stability of Sb2Te severely limits its application. In this work, we proposed a superhard and infusible Rhenium (Re) doped Sb2Te (RST) phase change material to improve the properties of Sb2Te. The data retention of RST was remarkably increased to 152 °C@10 years, which is much higher than those of traditional Ge2Sb2Te5 (87 °C@10 years) and Sb2Te (56 °C@10 years). The operation speed of the RST based device is as fast as 10 ns and the resistance ratio is more than 102 times. The density change of RST (4.2%) is smaller than those of Ge2Sb2Te5 (6.5%) and Sb2Te (5.7%). Furthermore, the operation voltage and power consumption of RST based device are much lower than those of Ge2Sb2Te5 and Sb2Te based devices. The results indicate that the RST is a promising material for high performance phase change memory or optical data storage applications.