Regensburg 2010 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Downloads | Hilfe

HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 61: Poster II: Materials, Interfaces and Heterostructures

HL 61.2: Poster

Donnerstag, 25. März 2010, 18:00–20:00, Poster D1

Ultrafast phase change RAM cell characterization — •Carl Schlockermann, Gunnar Bruns, Philipp Merkelbach, Hanno Volker, Martin Salinga, and Matthias Wuttig — 1. Physikalisches Institut (1A)

Phase Change materials possess unique material properties which already allow nonvolatile rewritable data storage in optical media (e.g. DVD-RW). The information is stored by the distinct difference of optical properties between the amorphous and crystalline structure. A sufficient data rate can be achieved by the ultrafast crystallization at elevated temperatures. A distinct difference in electrical properties between the phases together with the phenomenon of threshold switching, a sudden drop in resistivity at high electric fields, allows the use of such materials as a purely electronic storage called phase change RAM. Although such memory devices are close to the market with comparable properties as NOR FLASH memories, the afore mentioned phenomenon of threshold switching and the limits of crystallization speed are not yet identified. One reason are limits in the measurement techniques used so far which restrict the measurement speed of such electronic memory cells. In addition they did not allow the measurement of the cell current during the application of voltage pulses with high bandwidth. In this work we present a new measurement setup which overcomes these limits. Our results show that crystallization is possible at extremely high speed in these materials[1]. This may offer the possibility for such memories to compete with DRAM in the future. [1] Bruns G. et. al., App. Phys. Lett. 95, 043108 (2009)