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.
@article{arxiv.2105.13693,
title = {Projected mushroom-type phase-change memory},
author = {Syed Ghazi Sarwat and Timothy M. Philip and Ching-Tzu Chen and Benedikt Kersting and Robert L Bruce and Cheng-Wei Cheng and Ning Li and Nicole Saulnier and Matthew BrightSky and Abu Sebastian},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2105.13693},
year = {2022}
}