Driving Device Comparison for Phase-Change Memory

Author

Li, Lin ; Lu, Kailiang ; Rajendran, Bipin ; Happ, Thomas D. ; Lung, Hsiang-Lan ; Lam, Chung ; Chan, Mansun

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electron. & Comput. Eng., Hong Kong Univ. of Sci. & Technol., Kowloon, China

Volume

58

Issue

3

fYear

2011

fDate

3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

664

Lastpage

671

Abstract

A study is conducted to investigate the relative advantages of different driving devices for phase-change memory cells using 3-D numerical device simulation. Among various possible choices, p-n diodes and vertical gate-all-around (GAA) metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) are studied in detail as they represent distinct classes of driving devices. Different performance parameters including cell size, current drive, disturb immunity, power dissipation, and scalability are carefully compared. While p-n diodes show superiority in technology nodes with large device dimensions, the scaling process has improved the performance of GAA MOSFETs significantly to outperform that of p-n diodes in extremely scaled technologies.

Keywords

MOSFET; integrated circuit reliability; numerical analysis; phase change memories; semiconductor diodes; 3D numerical device simulation; GAA MOSFET; driving device; metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors; p-n diodes; phase-change memory cell; power dissipation; vertical gate-all-around; Arrays; Logic gates; MOSFETs; Phase change materials; Power demand; Programming; Resistance; Diode; gate-all-around MOSFET (GAA MOSFET); ovonic unified memory (OUM); phase change memory (PCM); phase change random access memory (PRAM);

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2010.2100082

Filename

5719075