Highly automated sequence for Phase Change Memory test structure characterization

The Phase Change Memory (PCM), is one of the most promising concepts, as a replacement of Flash memories that should be put in production in next years. However, even if the robustness of such technology is demonstrated for consumer stand-alone applications [1] with typically GST as phase-change chalcogenide material, data retention at high temperature remains an issue, and seemingly even GST based alloys are not able to respect requirements of automotive embedded applications. That is why material research on alternative chalcogenide materials is still lacking, and thorough electrical characterization at analytical cell level is necessary to evaluate the performances of the integrated material. In this work we introduce this concept and the tests to evaluate new technological steps. In particular, we describe the test system optimization and we examine the full automated sequences used for statistic data collection. First step consist in acquiring the SET-toRESET and RESET-to-SET programming characteristics; then data retention tests follow and eventually the cycling experiment close the run. Several characteristics and graphs illustrate this work displaying the key parameters.