Compact Thermal Model for Vertical Nanowire Phase-Change Memory Cells

We introduce a compact model for the temperature distribution in cylindrical nanowire (NW) phase-change memory (PCM) cells for both transient (nanoseconds) and steady-state time scales. The model takes advantage of the symmetry of the cell to efficiently calculate temperature distribution dependence on geometry and material/interface properties. The results are compared with data from the literature and with finite-element simulations, showing improved computation speed by two orders of magnitude. Programming current sensitivity to cell dimensions and material properties is investigated, indicating that NW diameter (
D
) and thermal boundary resistance (TBR) play the strongest role in enhancing PCM energy efficiency.