Electrical switching studies of Ge1Se1Te2 thin film for phase change memory

Chalcogenide phase change memory has high potential to be the next generation memory, because it is a non-volatile memory possessing high programming speed, low programming voltage, high sensing margin, high scalability, low energy consumption and long duration. Furthermore, the switching current and device reliability can be improved by further reducing the device design rule. A multi-bit per cell operation is also possible. Thus, very extensive research and development work is currently being conducted, in order to commercialize PRAM both as a standalone memory and a memory unit for systems on chip. In the present work, the memory devices composed of Ge₁Se₁Te₂ thin film was fabricated and was investigated their various characteristics.