Abstract
Phase change memory is known as the most promising candidate for the next generation nonvolatile memory technology. In this paper, the microstructural changes of Ge2Sb2Te5 film, which is the most common choice of phase change memory material, has been carefully studied by the combination of several characterization techniques. The combination of resistance measurements, X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and X-ray reflectivity allows us to simultaneously extract the characteristics of microstructural changes during crystallization process. The existence of surface/interface Ge2Sb2Te5 layer has been proposed here based on X-ray reflectivity measurements. Although the total film thickness decreases, as a result of the phase transition from amorphous to metastable crystalline cubic and then to the stable hexagonal phase, the surface/interface thickness increases after crystallization. Moreover, the increase of average grain size, density and surface roughness has been confirmed during thermal annealing process.
Highlights
In the era of information explosion, information recording and preservation are important
In order to characterize the phase transition behavior and thermal stability of prepared GST film, the resistance variation was measured as a function of temperature at a heating rate of 40 ◦C/min
The two transitions have been reported to be connected with two typical structural phase change.[10]
Summary
In the era of information explosion, information recording and preservation are important. Reversible phase-change materials have attracted considerable scientific attention because of their application in phase-change random access memory.[1,2] The phase-change random memory, known as Chalcogenide Random Access Memory (C-RAM), is worked by switching between the high resistance amorphous state and the low resistance crystalline state under heating by either laser or electrical pulses.[3,4] The crystallization temperature is one of the most important parameters because it determines the stability and the energy consumption of devices. It is meaningful to conduct an in-depth study of crystallization kinetics of GST thin films. The microstructure of GST film during crystallization has been carefully investigated by grazing incidence X-ray scattering technique, which is a state-of-art technique that can be used to study the individual thickness and the average roughness at each interface
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