Self-Healing of a Confined Phase Change Memory Device with a Metallic Surfactant Layer

Speaker: 
Yujun Xie
Seminar Date: 
Friday, September 22, 2017 - 8:00am
Location: 
BECTON SEMINAR ROOM See map
Prospect Street
New Haven, CT

Self-healing, an essential attribute in biology to sustain life, has been demonstrated in several materials systems to autonomously extend their cycle life.  Examples include polymers that can repair broken bonds or nanocapsules that release healing agents upon fracture at the micron scale. For complex integrated circuits, self-healing has yet to be demonstrated although it could significantly improve endurance of a circuit while reducing the error correction budget.  Here, we demonstrate self-healing in novel confined phase change memory (PCM) devices by controlling the electromigration of the phase change material at the nanoscale.  In contrast to the current mushroom PCM, the confined PCM has a symmetric device structure, which enables polarity reversal of set and reset voltage pulses for device operation. In situ transmission electron microscope (TEM) movies show that the voltage polarity controls the electromigration direction of the phase change material, which can be used to fill nanoscale voids that form during set/reset cycles.  Based on our finding, we demonstrate self-healing of a failed device.  We thus propose bipolar switching as a new operation mode for the confined PCM to reduce the chemical segregation, which can extend its endurance significantly.

Host: 
Corey O'Hern
Seminar Announcement Brochure: 

It appears your Web browser is not configured to display PDF files. Download adobe Acrobat or click here to download the PDF file.