Evolution of cell resistance, threshold voltage and crystallization temperature during cycling of line-cell phase-change random access memory

Doped SbTe phase change (PRAM) line cells produced by e-beam lithography were cycled 100 million times. During cell cycling the evolution of many cell properties were monitored, in particular the crystalline and amorphous resistance, amorphous resistance drift exponent, time-dependent threshold voltage, threshold voltage as a function of RESET pulse height, crystallization temperature, and activation energy of crystal growth. The power of the present approach is that all these properties were measured simultaneously during the life of single cells. The evolution of the cell properties can be summarized by (i) an initialization phase characterized by settle-in effect of the material surrounding the programmable region, (ii) a usable life phase where initially the cell properties remain fairly constant until after -5 x 10(5) cycles decomposition of the programmed region caused degradation of the cell properties, and (iii) finally an end of life phase where the cell is stuck in the SET state after typically 10(8) cycles. Although generally the threshold voltage is directly related to the amorphous resistance it was found that during cycling this relation is not constant but evolved as well. Instead, the crystallization temperature could be linked to the threshold voltage throughout the complete life cycle of the cell which could lead to new insights to the nature of the threshold event. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3603025]