Engineering defects in pristine amorphous chalcogenides for forming-free low voltage selectors

Amorphous chalcogenide-based threshold selectors are among the most promising two-terminal technologies for high density non-volatile memories. However, the necessity of a high voltage forming operation makes their implementation in low voltage logic chips a key challenge. This work reports a new approach towards forming-free chalcogenide selectors, where extra defects are introduced to assist the forming process and reduce the forming voltage. The added defects are shown to increase the conductivity of the pristine chalcogenide and can be annihilated after the first switching pulse operation. Forming-free low voltage selectors based on SiNGeCTe (SNGCT) chalcogenide are demonstrated along with excellent endurance characteristics over 10
¹⁰
cycles.