Microthermal Stage for Electrothermal Characterization of Phase-Change Memory

Author

Lee, Jaeho ; Kim, SangBum ; Jeyasingh, Rakesh ; Asheghi, Mehdi ; Wong, H. -S Philip ; Goodson, Kenneth E.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Mech. Eng., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, USA

Volume

32

Issue

7

fYear

2011

fDate

7/1/2011 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

952

Lastpage

954

Abstract

This letter describes a novel experimental structure that captures the impact of rapid temperature transients and repetitive cycling on the thermal and electrical properties of Ge₂ Sb₂Te₅ (GST). The microthermal stage dramatically improves the temporal resolution for heating and enables simultaneous thermal and electrical characterizations. Thermal conductivity measurements show phase transitions of GST accompanied by abrupt changes in electrical resistance. Repetitive cycling with durations down to 100 ns produces melt-quenched amorphous GST with the thermal conductivity 40% lower than that of crystalline GST. Recrystallization increases conductivity but not up to the value achieved by long-timescale bulk annealing. This is potentially because the rapidly recrystallized GST contains more disorder near the interface.

Keywords

phase change memories; thermal conductivity; electrical resistance; electrothermal characterization; microthermal stage; phase-change memory; rapid temperature transients; repetitive cycling; thermal conductivity; Conductivity; Heating; Rapid thermal annealing; Resistance; Temperature measurement; Thermal conductivity; $hbox{Ge}_{2}hbox{Sb}_{2}hbox{Te}_{5}$ (GST); microthermal stage (MTS); phase-change memory (PCM); thermal conductivity;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2011.2144952

Filename

5770176