Impact of Thermal Boundary Resistance on the Performance and Scaling of Phase-Change Memory Device

Durai, Suresh; Raj, Srinivasan; Manivannan, Anbarasu

doi:10.1109/tcad.2019.2927502

Cited by 15 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…Indeed, improving efficiency in ultrasmall devices may require integrating atomically thin layers, such as graphene or MoS 2 , to act as a thermal barrier between the PCM and electrical contacts [381,382]. Furthermore, the thermal gradient within the cell, as well as the impact of non-Joule heating effects, such as thermoelectric heating, can change substantially as device dimensions shrink, new materials are introduced, and interfacial effects increase in significance [383][384][385][386]. Characterizing and leveraging the thermal transport in small devices will be especially critical to achieving multilevel memory, which requires the ability to precisely and reproducibly control the temperature profile within the PCM cell to modulate the volume fraction of the cell, which is crystallized or amorphized on each write step [387][388][389].…”

Section: Nanoscale Energy Transport In Next-generation Micro-electronic Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applications and Impacts of Nanoscale Thermal Transport in Electronics Packaging

Warzoha

Wilson

Donovan

et al. 2021

Journal of Electronic Packaging

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This review introduces relevant nanoscale thermal transport processes that impact thermal abatement in power electronics applications. Specifically, we highlight the importance of nanoscale thermal transport mechanisms at each layer in material hierarchies that make up modern electronic devices. This includes those mechanisms that impact thermal transport through: (1) substrates, (2) interfaces and 2-D materials and (3) heat spreading materials. For each material layer, we provide examples of recent works that (1) demonstrate improvements in thermal performance and/or (2) improve our understanding of the relevance of nanoscale thermal transport across material junctions. We end our discussion by highlighting several additional applications that have benefited from a consideration of nanoscale thermal transport phenomena, including RF electronics and neuromorphic computing.

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Section: Nanoscale Energy Transport In Next-generation Micro-electronic Systemsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Applications and Impacts of Nanoscale Thermal Transport in Electronics Packaging

Warzoha

Wilson

Donovan

et al. 2021

Journal of Electronic Packaging

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“…The impact of TBR increases in importance with downscaling, shown in past literature [24] (as well as in results below), so it is useful to isolate its impact when comparing with the GT and BM models. Therefore we present two variations of the models, one with α = 0 for all interfaces, denoted 'TBR-absent', and one with non-zero α values denoted 'TBR-present'.…”

Section: The Modelmentioning

confidence: 85%

Impact of solid–liquid interfacial thermodynamics on phase-change memory RESET scaling

Lewis¹,

Brush²

2022

Nanotechnology

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A model of the RESET melting process in conventional phase-change memory (PCM) devices is constructed in which the Gibbs–Thomson (GT) effect, representing local equilibrium at the solid–liquid interface, is included as an interfacial condition for the electro-thermal model of the PCM device. A comparison is made between the GT model and a commonly used model in which the interfacial temperature is fixed at the bulk melting temperature of the PCM material. The model is applied to conventional PCM designs in which a dome-shaped liquid/amorphous region is formed. Two families of solutions are computed representing steady state liquid regions, distinguished by their thermodynamic aspects. There is a family of solutions representing a hypothetical liquid nucleation process, and a family of larger steady-state liquid solutions representing the limit of the melting process. These ‘melting limits’ enable calculation of minima in voltage and corresponding current required for the RESET process. In this PCM configuration, the GT effect constrains the equilibrium solid–liquid interface temperature to remain above the bulk melting temperature during melting. The magnitude of this temperature difference increases with decreasing device size scale, thus requiring an increase in the required voltage and current needed for RESET compared to the case in which the interface temperature is approximated by the bulk melting temperature. This increase becomes substantial for active device dimensions in the <20 nm range. The impact of this phenomena on PCM device design is discussed.

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“…Here, the active portion of the device is shown after removing tungsten and oxide, and the device consists of a top electrode or sinker (TiN), active material (Ge 2 Sb 2 Te 5 , GST), and bottom electrode or heater (TiN). All the dimensions are taken from [24]. The structure consists of active material sandwiched between the heater and sinker.…”

Section: = ( ) Ar Major Axis Minor Axismentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of process-induced ellipticity on the RESET process of cylindrical phase change memory devices

Durai¹,

Devi²,

Raj³

et al. 2022

Phys. Scr.

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Phase change memory (PCM) is one of the promising candidates for the next-generation high-speed non-volatile memory which exhibits excellent scalability. The cylindrical-type PCM devices entering the nano-scale regime should show their tolerance to the variation in the manufacturing process. However, it is highly challenging to fabricate the cylindrical-type nano-scale devices ideally with circular cross-sections. In general, the degree of variation in circular cross-section is dictated by a geometrical parameter called aspect ratio (AR). In this study, the impact of variation in AR of heater (ARheater) and active material, Ge2Sb2Te5 (ARGST) on the RESET programming of the mushroom-type cylindrical PCM device is systematically investigated by using 3D TCAD simulations. The simulation results reveal that the RESET current (IRESET) of the reference device (100 nm heater diameter) consisting of elliptical cross-sections increases significantly to ~67% when ARheater = 2 and 1 ≤ ARGST ≤ 2, whereas for the scaled-down devices of 20 nm and 10 nm heater diameter with elliptical cross-sections, the IRESET increases to ~35% and ~38% when ARheater = 2 and ARGST = 1, and further IRESET increases to ~54% and ~63% when ARheater = 2 and ARGST = 2 leading to high-power RESET programming. In the case of the reference device, the ARGST did not play any significant role on IRESET. However, in the scaled-down device, both ARheater and ARGST significantly affect the IRESET. Furthermore, the device employing a vertically-oriented elliptical heater and horizontally-oriented elliptical GST (where ARheater = 2 and ARGST = 0.5) shows the peculiar re-amorphization among all the cases considered in this study. Hence, the miniaturized cylindrical PCM devices comprising elliptical cross-sections due to process-induced variability requires an accurate understanding of the programming characteristics for reliable modeling and simulations.

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Impact of Thermal Boundary Resistance on the Performance and Scaling of Phase-Change Memory Device

Cited by 15 publications

References 26 publications

Applications and Impacts of Nanoscale Thermal Transport in Electronics Packaging

Applications and Impacts of Nanoscale Thermal Transport in Electronics Packaging

Impact of solid–liquid interfacial thermodynamics on phase-change memory RESET scaling

Impact of process-induced ellipticity on the RESET process of cylindrical phase change memory devices

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