Investigation of the Electrical Performances of µtrench PCM at High Operating Temperature

In this paper, we investigate the electrical performance of Phase-Change Memory (PCM) devices at high operating temperature (up to 180°C). We perform a detailed experimental analysis on μtrench PCM cells with different dimensions. We show that the high temperature strongly impacts the programming curves, by linearly decreasing the threshold voltage and decreasing the RESET current. Furthermore, the cyclability of the cell significantly increases at high temperature. These results are explained by means of physical simulations, highlighting the decreased thermal peak stress in the cell at high operating temperatures.