R&D: Preliminary Results on Industrial 28nm FD-SOI Phase Change Memory at Cryogenic Temperature

Solid-State Electronics has published an article written by Philippe Galy, STMicroelectronics, 850 rue Jean Monnet, 38920 Crolles, France, Joao Henrique Quintino Palhares, STMicroelectronics, 850 rue Jean Monnet, 38920 Crolles, France, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, SPINTEC Grenoble, France, Institut quantique, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boulevard de l’Université, Sherbrooke QC J1K 2R1, Canada, and Laboratoire Nanotechnologies Nano systèmes (LN2) CNRS UMI-3463—3IT, CNRS, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, Lorena Anghe, Université Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP, SPINTEC Grenoble, France, Yann Beilliard, Institut quantique, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boulevard de l’Université, Sherbrooke QC J1K 2R1, Canada, Laboratoire Nanotechnologies Nano systèmes (LN2) CNRS UMI-3463—3IT, CNRS, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, and Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Innovation Technologique (3IT), Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, Fabien Alibart, Laboratoire Nanotechnologies Nano systèmes (LN2) CNRS UMI-3463—3IT, CNRS, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, and Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Innovation Technologique (3IT), Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada , Dominique Drouin,Institut quantique, Université de Sherbrooke, 2500 Boulevard de l’Université, Sherbrooke QC J1K 2R1, Canada, Laboratoire Nanotechnologies Nano systèmes (LN2) CNRS UMI-3463—3IT, CNRS, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, and Institut Interdisciplinaire d’Innovation Technologique (3IT), Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke J1K 0A5, Canada, Jury Sandrini, and Franck Arnaud, STMicroelectronics, 850 rue Jean Monnet, 38920 Crolles, France.

Abstract: “This study reports new preliminary results on fully co-integrated 28 nm FD-SOI UTBB phase change memories (PCM) programmed at room temperature (RT) and cryogenic temperature (CT). The PCM is a germanium, antimony, tellurium (GST) compound type which is found to be functional at 77K with multi-state switching without additional operating requirements compared to the ambient temperature. As the phase change memory is temperature dependent, drift tests are also performed to track the change in resistance over time after programming the pulses to estimate drift coefficients. An interesting feature is that using the same programming bias conditions, the drift coefficient is three times lower at 77K with an improvement in the I_on/I_off ratio. These results are very encouraging and open the door to the PCM in applications both at high temperatures (e.g. automotive) and at very low temperatures (e.g. space, quantum).“