Investigation on non-rotating and non-volatile phase change memory

In this work, the thermal and electrical performances of chalcogenide-based phase change memory cell were investigated. We have investigated the current reduction issue for CRAM cell theoretically and experimentally. It was found that the value of programming current is highly dependent on the materials and device structure. The effects of materials and cell geometry, structure, and size on thermal and electrical properties of memory cell were simulated and analyzed. The dependence of the memory cell performance on the configuration of memory medium and the cell size were also studied by means of simulation and experiments. An effective method has been proposed to predict the RESET and SET programming current for memory cell. A new structure phase change memory cell was proposed, fabricated and tested. The measurement showed that the memory cell could work at low current.