Abstract

Phase change materials exhibit threshold switching (TS) that establishes electrical conduction through amorphous material followed by Joule heating leading to its crystallization (set). However, achieving picosecond TS is one of the key challenges for realizing non-volatile memory operations closer to the speed of computing. Here, we present a trajectory map for enabling picosecond TS on the basis of exhaustive experimental results of voltage-dependent transient characteristics of Ge2Sb2Te5 phase-change memory (PCM) devices. We demonstrate strikingly faster switching, revealing an extraordinarily low delay time of less than 50 ps for an over-voltage equal to twice the threshold voltage. Moreover, a constant device current during the delay time validates the electronic nature of TS. This trajectory map will be useful for designing PCM device with SRAM-like speed.

Details

Title
A scheme for enabling the ultimate speed of threshold switching in phase change memory devices
Author
Saxena Nishant 1 ; Raghunathan Rajamani 2 ; Manivannan Anbarasu 1 

 Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Phase Change Memory Lab, Advanced Memory and Computing Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Chennai, India (GRID:grid.417969.4) (ISNI:0000 0001 2315 1926) 
 UGC-DAE Consortium for Scientific Research, Indore, India (GRID:grid.472587.b) (ISNI:0000 0004 1767 9144) 
Publication year
2021
Publication date
2021
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
e-ISSN
20452322
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2502043291
Copyright
© The Author(s) 2021. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.