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arXiv · 2105.13693

Projected mushroom-type phase-change memory

Abstract

Phase-change memory devices have found applications in in-memory computing where the physical attributes of these devices are exploited to compute in place without the need to shuttle data between memory and processing units. However, non-idealities such as temporal variations in the electrical resistance have a detrimental impact on the achievable computational precision. To address this, a promising approach is projecting the phase configuration of phase change material onto some stable element within the device. Here we investigate the projection mechanism in a prominent phase-change memory device architecture, namely mushroom-type phase-change memory. Using nanoscale projected Ge2Sb2Te5 devices we study the key attributes of state-dependent resistance, drift coefficients, and phase configurations, and using them reveal how these devices fundamentally work.

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Syed Ghazi Sarwat, Timothy M. Philip, Ching-Tzu Chen, Benedikt Kersting, Robert L Bruce, Cheng-Wei Cheng, Ning Li, Nicole Saulnier, Matthew BrightSky, Abu Sebastian. 2021-05-28. Projected mushroom-type phase-change memory. https://doi.org/10.1002/adfm.202106547

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