An Improvement of the Thermal Stability of SnTe through Nitrogen Doping
XIA Meng-Jiao1,2, RAO Feng1**, SONG Zhi-Tang1, REN Kun1,2, WU Liang-Cai1, LIU Bo1, FENG Song-Lin1
1State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050 2University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049
Abstract：Nitrogen doping is applied to improve the thermal stability of SnTe. The crystallization temperature Tc of SnTe is below room temperature, which can be elevated to 216°C by 7.65at.% nitrogen doping. Nitrogen doping results in the formation of SnNx in the nitrogen doped SnTe (N-SnTe) materials, which hinders the movement of atoms and suppresses the crystallization, leading to a better thermal stability. The crystallization activation energy (Ea) and data retention for ten years of 7.65at.% N-SnTe are 1.89 eV and 81°C, respectively. Moreover, the voltage pulses have successfully triggered the SET and RESET operations of the N-SnTe based device at the voltage of 0.9 V and 2.6 V. The good thermal stability and reversible phase-change ability have proved the potential of N-SnTe for phase-change memory application.
2013, Vol. 30 
