Simple and low-cost fabrication of a metal nanoplug on various substrates by electroless deposition

Abstract

An electroless deposition (ELD) method is introduced to fabricate a metal nanoplug for its advantages of simplicity, low cost and auto-selectivity. It was demonstrated that nanoplugs of less than 50 nm in diameter can be fabricated by ELD nickel on various substrates, such as silicon, tungsten and titanium nitride. The main composition of the ELD nanoplug was characterized as nickel by an energy dispersive X-ray microanalyzer. A functional vertical phase-change random access memory (PCRAM) device with a heater diameter of around 9 μm was fabricated by using the ELD method. The I—V characteristics demonstrated that the threshold current is only 90.8 μA. This showed that the ELD process can satisfy the demands of PCRAM device application, as well as device performance improvement. The ELD process provides a promising method for the simple and low-cost fabrication of metal nanoplugs.