Carbon-Doped Sb-Rich Ge-Sb-Te Phase Change Material for High Speed and High Thermal Stability Phase Change Memory Applications

Carbon-doped Sb-rich Ge-Sb-Te (Sb-CGST) is proved to be a promising candidate for phase change memory because of it high crystallization temperature (higher than 200°C) and 10-year data retention temperature (higher than 120°C). The carbon-doped Sb-rich Ge-Sb-Te (Sb-CGST) films were deposited on SiO2/Si (100) substrate by RF magnetron co-sputtering using CGST alloy target (a GST target containing 16 at. % C) and Sb targets at room temperature. The content of Sb in the films was controlled by adjusting the sputtering power ratio of CGST and Sb. The results showed that both of these two properties increase firstly and then decreases with increasing the content of Sb, which are superior to that of Ge2Sb2Te5. Furthermore, Sb-CGST based PCM cells were fabricated to investigate the property of material. 6ns pulse could realize SET operation, and 3.2 x 10-11J energy can realize RESET operation.