R&D: Investigation of Effect of Blade Electrode Width on Performance of PCM

Semiconductor Science and Technology has published an article written by Zi-Jing Cui, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Nanotechnology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People’s Republic of China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China, Dao-Lin Cai, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Nanotechnology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People’s Republic of China, Yang Li, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Nanotechnology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People’s Republic of China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China, Cheng-Xing Li, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Nanotechnology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People’s Republic of China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100080, People’s Republic of China, Yun Ling, School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, Suzhou, China, and Zhi-Tang Song, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Nanotechnology Laboratory, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, People’s Republic of China.

Abstract: “The blade bottom electrode contact (BEC) can significantly reduce the programming current of the phase change memory (PCM) and achieve low power consumption compared with the typical T-shaped PCM cell. The method of controlling the electrode width by controlling the thickness of the deposited layer can make the size break through the limit of photolithography. This paper proves that the RESET programming current and power consumption of the PCM decrease linearly with the decrease of the blade BEC width, and builds a theoretical model to verify it by simulating the distribution internal temperature field. Based on the above research, the cell life of PCM with different electrode widths was tested, and it was proved that the endurance of PCM increased with the decrease of the width of the blade electrode, caused by the lower power consumption of the narrower electrode.“