Advantages of Ta-Doped Sb3Te1 Materials for Phase Change Memory Applications

Mingyue Shao; Yang Qiao; Yuan Xue; Sannian Song; Zhitang Song; Xiaodan Li

doi:10.3390/nano13040633

Advantages of Ta-Doped Sb₃Te₁ Materials for Phase Change Memory Applications

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Feb 5;13(4):633. doi: 10.3390/nano13040633.

Authors

Mingyue Shao^{1

2}, Yang Qiao³, Yuan Xue^{1

2}, Sannian Song^{1

2}, Zhitang Song^{1

2}, Xiaodan Li^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.
² Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ The Microelectronic Research & Development Center, Shanghai University, Shanghai 200444, China.

Abstract

Phase change memory (PCM), a typical representative of new storage technologies, offers significant advantages in terms of capacity and endurance. However, among the research on phase change materials, thermal stability and switching speed performance have always been the direction where breakthroughs are needed. In this research, as a high-speed and good thermal stability material, Ta was proposed to be doped in Sb₃Te₁ alloy to improve the phase transition performance and electrical properties. The characterization shows that Ta-doped Sb₃Te₁ can crystallize at temperatures up to 232 °C and devices can operate at speeds of 6 ns and 8 × 10⁴ operation cycles. The reduction of grain size and the density change rate (3.39%) show excellent performances, which are both smaller than that of Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ (GST) and Sb₃Te₁. These properties conclusively demonstrate that Ta incorporation of Sb₃Te₁ alloy is a material with better thermal stability and faster crystallization rates for PCM applications.

Keywords: PCM; crystallization; high speed; thermal stability.

Abstract

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