197Au irradiation study of phase-change memory cell with GeSbTe alloy

✍ Scribed by Wu, Liangcai ;Zhou, Xilin ;Song, Zhitang ;Lian, Jie ;Rao, Feng ;Liu, Bo ;Song, Sannian ;Liu, Weili ;Liu, Xuyan ;Feng, Songlin

• Book ID: 105366149
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 318 KB
• Volume: 207
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0031-8965
• DOI: 10.1002/pssa.201026008

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

A ^197^Au ion source was used to irradiate a Ge~2~Sb~2~Te~5~‐alloy‐based phase‐change memory (PCM) cell to study the ion‐irradiation effect on the properties of the cell. The PCM devices with the tungsten (W) heating electrode of 260 nm diameter were fabricated by 0.18 µm complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Four different doses (10^10^, 10^11^, 10^12^, and 5 × 10^12^ ions/cm^2^, respectively) were applied to irradiate the PCM cell. The samples before and after irradiation were characterized by current–voltage and resistance measurements at room temperature. It is found that the cell properties (resistance value of the amorphous and crystalline states, threshold voltage, and current for phase transition, etc.) have hardly changed, even for the sample irradiated up to 10^12^ ions/cm^2^ dose, and the cell still has good set–reset operation ability (above 10^5^ cycles). Furthermore, the resistance ratio remains at 1000 even after 10^5^ cycles of the set–reset operation. The results show the PCM cell with Ge~2~Sb~2~Te~5~ alloy has a strong ion‐irradiation tolerance.