Electro-Thermal Model for Thermal Disturbance in Cross-Point Phase-Change Memory

We developed an electro-thermal model for cross-point phase-change memory (X-PCM) and compared the calculation values with the experimental results. In order to simulate the electro-thermal phenomenon such as thermal disturbance (TDB) of victim cells and reset the current (
${I}_{{\text {RESET}}}$
) of aggressor cells in a fully confined cross-point structure, a three by three mini-array was constructed with the finite-elemental method. Unlike the conventional thermal model, which only shows the temperature gradient for TDB, our new model can predict the crystallization behavior of victim cells by combining the crystallization model for nucleation and growth. This makes it possible to compare the calculation results with the experimental ones through the crystalline fraction of the victim cell. The simulation results clearly reveal that our new model can closely estimate the victim cell’s crystalline fraction for TDB, with the variation of both pulse height (PH) and pulse width (PW) during the RESET operation. Applying the confirmed model for devices of smaller dimensions shows that TDB increases as the device scales down. The increase of TDB is particularly severe as cells become smaller than 16 nm. We suggest that TDB can be reduced not only by decreasing the thermal conductivity (
$\kappa $
) of the interlayer dielectric (ILD), but also by minimizing the PW of the aggressor.