Dynamic Resistance—A Metric for Variability Characterization of Phase-Change Memory

The resistance of phase-change-memory (PCM) cells measured during RESET programming (dynamic resistance, R
_d
) is found to be inversely proportional to the amplitude of the programming current, as R
_d
= [A/I] + B. We show that parameters A and B are related to the intrinsic properties of the memory cell, and demonstrate by means of experimental data that they could be used to characterize the cell-to-cell process-induced variability of PCM cells.