Compact Thermal Model for Vertical Nanowire Phase-Change Memory Cells

Author

Chen, I-Ru ; Pop, Eric

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Univ. of Illinois, Urbana, IL

Volume

56

Issue

7

fYear

2009

fDate

7/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

1523

Lastpage

1528

Abstract

We introduce a compact model for the temperature distribution in cylindrical nanowire (NW) phase-change memory (PCM) cells for both transient (nanoseconds) and steady-state time scales. The model takes advantage of the symmetry of the cell to efficiently calculate temperature distribution dependence on geometry and material/interface properties. The results are compared with data from the literature and with finite-element simulations, showing improved computation speed by two orders of magnitude. Programming current sensitivity to cell dimensions and material properties is investigated, indicating that NW diameter (D) and thermal boundary resistance (TBR) play the strongest role in enhancing PCM energy efficiency.

Keywords

nanoelectronics; nanowires; phase change memories; temperature distribution; thermal analysis; thermal resistance; cylindrical nanowire PCM cell; steady-state time scale; temperature distribution; thermal boundary resistance; thermal model; transient time scale; vertical nanowire phase-change memory cell; Computational modeling; Finite element methods; Geometry; Material properties; Phase change materials; Phase change memory; Solid modeling; Steady-state; Temperature distribution; Thermal resistance; Compact model; GST nanowire (NW); phase-change memory (PCM); thermal transport;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2009.2021364

Filename

5072295