R&D: High Performance of Er-Doped Sb2Te Material Used in Phase Change Memory

Journal of Alloys and Compounds has published an article written by Jin Zhao, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China, School of Physical Science and Technology, Shanghai Tech University, Shanghai 201210, China, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China, Zhenhui Yuan, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China, and University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China, Wen-Xiong Song, and Zhitang Song, State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China.

Abstract: “To date, operation speed and data retention are still bottlenecks for phase-change memory. Doping impurity is a practical strategy to improve these performances of phase-change memory. Here, to avoid the precipitation of impurity, we choose erbium(Er) dopant due to the most matched structure with parental Sb2Te (EST), which is manifested by both experimental and simulation results that Er locates at lattice position. The device tests show the excellent comprehensive performances: operation speed as fast as 6 ns and 10-year data retention as high as 121 °C. This excellent amorphous thermal stability stems from the strong Er-Te bonds, and these stable local patterns stabilize glassy states and result in high stability. Our study not only demonstrates that the performance of designed EST meets the requirement of phase-change memory, but also provides general doping rules to obtain better comprehensive performance.“