Germanium Nitride as a Buffer Layer for Phase Change Memory
ZHANG Xu, LIU Bo**, PENG Cheng, RAO Feng, ZHOU Xi-Lin, SONG San-Nian, WANG Liang-Yong, CHENG Yan, WU Liang-Cai, YAO Dong-Ning, SONG Zhi-Tang, FENG Song-Lin
State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050
Abstract:The results of adhesion improvement and SET-RESET operation voltage reduction for the GeN buffer layer are presented. It is found that the adhesive strength between the Ge2Sb2Te5(GST) layer and the layer below could be increased at least 20 times, which is beneficial for solving the phase change material peeling issue in the fabrication process of phase change memory (PCM). Meanwhile, the RESET voltage of the PCM cell with a 3-nm-thick GeN buffer layer can be reduced from 3.5 V to 2.2 V. The GeN buffer layer will play an important role in high density and low power consumption PCM applications.