To understand the mechanism underlying the fast, reversible, phase transformation, information about the atomic structure and defects structures in phase change materials class is key. PCMs are investigated for many applications. These devices are chalcogenide based and use self heating to quickly switch between amorphous and crystalline phases, generating orders of magnitude differences in the electrical resistivity. The main challenges with PCMs have been the large power required to heat above crystallization or melting (for melt-quench amorphization) temperatures and limited reliability due to factors such as resistance drifts of the metastable phases, void formation and elemental segregation upon cycling. Characterization of devices and their unique switching behavior result in distinct material properties affected by the atomic arrangement in the respective phase. TEM is used to study the atomic structure of the metastable crystalline phase. The aim is to correlate the microstructure with results from electrical characterization, building on R vs T measurements on various thicknesses GST thin films.
To monitor phase changes in real-time as a function of temperature, thin films are deposited directly onto Protochips carriers. The Protochips heating holders provides controlled temperature changes while imaging in the TEM. These studies can provide insights into how changes occur in the various phase transformations even though the rate of temperature change is much slower than the PCM device operation. Other critical processes such as void formation, grain evolution and the cause of resistance drift can thereby be related to changes in structure and chemistry. Materials characterization is performed using Tecnai F30 and Titan ETEM microscopes, operating at 300kV. Both the microscopes can accept the same Protochips heating holders. The K2 direct electron detector camera equipped with the ETEM allows high-speed video recording (1600 f/s) of structural changes occurring in these materials upon heating and cooling. In this presentation, we will describe the effect of heating thin films of different thickness and composition, the changes in crystallinity and grain size, and how these changes correlate with changes in the electrical properties of the films. We will emphasize that it is always important to use low-dose and/or beam blanking techniques to distinguish changes induced by the beam from those due to the heating or introduction of an electric current.
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Resistance drift of metastable amorphous and crystalline fcc GeSbTe memory devices
Phase‐change memory is an emerging technology that utilizes the electrical resistivity contrast between the amorphous and crystalline phases of chalcogenide glasses to store data. The most commonly used material for PCM has been GeSbTe (GST), which has metastable amorphous and crystalline fcc phases and a stable crystalline hcp phase [1]. One difficulty with the implementation of PCM is the upward resistance drift of the metastable amorphous and crystalline fcc phases. We are using electrical characterization together with transmission electron microscopy and finite‐element electrothermal simulations [2] to study the
physical mechanisms that give rise to the electrical resistance drift of GST cells.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1710468
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10105353
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- APS March Meeting
- Volume:
- 64
- Issue:
- 2
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- T70.00150
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Phase change memory (PCM) is a high speed, high endurance, high density non-volatile memory technology that utilizes chalcogenide materials such as Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 (GST) that can be electrically cycled between highly resistive amorphous and low resistance crystalline phases. The resistance of the amorphous phase of PCM cells increase (drift) in time following a power law [1] , which increases the memory window in time but limits in the implementation of multi-bit-per-cell PCM. There has been a number of theories explaining the origin of drift [1] - [4] , mostly attributing it to structural relaxation, a thermally activated rearrangement of atoms in the amorphous structure [2] . Most of the studies on resistance drift are based on experiments at or above room temperature, where multiple processes may be occurring simultaneously. In this work, we melt-quenched amorphized GST line cells with widths ~120-140 nm, lengths ~390-500 nm, and thickness ~50nm ( Fig. 1 ) and monitored the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics using a parameter analyzer ( Fig. 2 ) in 85 K to 350 K range. We extracted the drift co-efficient from the slope of the resistance vs. time plots (using low-voltage measurements) and observed resistance drift in the 125 K -300 K temperature range ( Fig. 3 ). We found an approximately linear increase in drift coefficient as a function of temperature from ~ 0.07 at 125 K to ~ 0.11 at 200 K and approximately constant drift coefficients in the 200 K to 300 K range ( Fig. 3 inset). These results suggest that structural relaxations alone cannot account for resistance drift, additional mechanisms are contributing to this phenomenon [5] , [6] .more » « less
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Phase-change memory (PCM) materials are being developed for faster, non-volatile & high-density memory that can facilitate more efficient computation as well as data storage. The materials used for these PCM devices are usually chalcogenides that can be switched between their amorphous and crystalline phases thus producing orders of magnitude difference in the electrical resistivity [1, 2]. The operation of such devices is limited by elemental segregation and void formation, which occurs as a result of the extensive cycling. After crystallization, the structure gradually transforms from fcc to hexagonal. In the present work, we are studying these different phase changes in-situ as they occur in PCM materials basically using TEM imaging. The aim is to correlate device modeling and electrical characterization in order to improve the models and enable accurate, predictive simulations. The thin film materials and devices can be directly deposited onto Protochips devices, allowing controlled temperature changes while imaging in the TEM. Although the temperature change rate achievable is too slow as compared to the fastest PCM-device operation, these rates can provides valuable insights into the various property changes in the material and phase transformations as well. Both a Cs-image corrected Titan ETEM and a Tecnai F30 have been used for this study. The ETEM is equipped with a K2 direct electron detector camera allowing high-speed video recording of these PCM materials.more » « less
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Material properties of Ga–Sb binary alloy thin films deposited under ultra-high vacuum conditions were studied for analog phase change memory (PCM) applications. Crystallization of this alloy was shown to occur in the temperature range of 180–264 °C, with activation energy >2.5 eV depending on the composition. X-ray diffraction (XRD) studies showed phase separation upon crystallization into two phases, Ga-doped A7 antimony and cubic zinc-blende GaSb. Synchrotron in situ XRD analysis revealed that crystallization into the A7 phase is accompanied by Ga out-diffusion from the grains. X-ray absorption fine structure studies of the local structure of these alloys demonstrated a bond length decrease with a stable coordination number of 4 upon amorphous-to-crystalline phase transformation. Mushroom cell structures built with Ga–Sb alloys on ø110 nm TiN heater show a phase change material resistance switching behavior with resistance ratio >100 under electrical pulse measurements. TEM and Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) studies of the Ga–Sb cells after ∼100 switching cycles revealed that partial SET or intermediate resistance states are attained by the variation of the grain size of the material as well as the Ga content in the A7 phase. A mechanism for a reversible composition control is proposed for analog cell performance. These results indicate that Te-free Ga–Sb binary alloys are potential candidates for analog PCM applications.more » « less
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We stabilize resistance of melt-quenched amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 (a-GST) phase change memory (PCM) line cells by substantially accelerating resistance drift and bringing it to a stop within a few minutes with application of high electric field stresses. The acceleration of drift is clearly observable at electric fields > 26 MV/m at all temperatures (85 K - 300 K) and is independent of the current forced through the device, which is a strong function of temperature. The low-field (< 21 MV/m) I-V characteristics of the stabilized cells measured in 85 K - 300 K range fit well to a 2D thermally-activated hopping transport model, yielding hopping distances in the direction of the field and activation energies ranging from 2 nm and 0.2 eV at 85 K to 6 nm and 0.4 eV at 300 K. Hopping transport appears to be better aligned with the field direction at higher temperatures. The high-field current response to voltage is significantly stronger and displays a distinctly different characteristic: the differential resistances at different temperatures extrapolate to a single point (8.9x10-8 this http URL), comparable to the resistivity of copper at 60 K, at 65.6 +/- 0.4 MV/m. The physical mechanisms that give rise to the substantial increase in current in the high-field regime also accelerate resistance drift. We constructed field and temperature dependent conduction models based on the experimental results and integrated it with our electro-thermal finite element device simulation framework to analyze reset, set and read operations of PCM devices.more » « less
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