Published April 29, 2021 | Version v1
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Designing crystallization to tune the performance of phase-change memory: rules of hierarchical melt and coordinate bond

  • 1. State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China
  • 2. School of Physical Science and Technology, Shanghai Tech University, Shanghai 201210, China
  • 3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

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Description

While alloy design has practically shown an efficient strategy to mediate two seemingly conflicted performances of writing speed and data retention in phase-change memory, the detailed kinetic pathway of alloy-tuned crystallization is still unclear. Here, we propose hierarchical melt and coordinate bond strategies to solve them, where the former stabilizes a medium-range crystal-like region and the latter provides a rule to stabilize amorphous. The Er0.52Sb2Te3 compound we designed achieves writing speed of 3.2 ns and ten-year data retention of 161 °C. We provide a direct atomic-level evidence that two neighbor Er atoms stabilize a medium-range crystal-like region, acting as a precursor to accelerate crystallization; meanwhile, the essential reason of stabilization originates from the formation of coordinate bonds by sharing lone-pair electrons of chalcogenide atoms with the empty 5d orbitals of Er atoms. The two rules pave the way for the development of storage-class memory with excellent comprehensive performance to achieve next revolutionary technology node.

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References

Journal reference
J. Zhao, W.-X. Song, T. Xin, Z. Song 12, 6473(2021), doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-26696-9