Unified physical modeling of reliability mechanisms and scaling perspective of phase change memory

Phase change memory (PCM) is attracting an increasing interest as next generation stand-alone and embedded memory technology. Quantitative predictions of PCM scaling require a thorough understanding of physical reliability mechanisms, such as current fluctuation, structural relaxation and crystallization in the amorphous phase. This work describes recent advances in the physical modeling of structure fluctuation, relaxation and crystallization for the amorphous chalcogenide in PCM cells, showing a unified interpretation of relaxation/crystallization kinetic. The statistical variability of crystallization in PCM arrays and potential limitations in memory downscaling are discussed.