Uniform silicon carbide doped Sb2Te nanomaterial for high temperature and high speed PCM applications

Abstract Sb–Te alloy is widely considered as one of the important materials for phase change memory (PCM) with fast operation speed. However, the poor amorphous phase stability limits its wide application. In this work, silicon carbide (SiC) doped Sb 2 Te (Sb 2 Te-SiC) nanomaterial was proposed to improve the thermal stability of Sb 2 Te. It was found that the crystallization temperature of Sb 2 Te was remarkably improved from 149 °C to 251 °C. Accordingly, the temperature for 10-year data retention increases from 56.5 °C to 156.4 °C. X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscope results indicate that the grain size of Sb 2 Te-SiC film was largely reduced with SiC doping. Besides, experimental results show the Sb 2 Te-SiC nanomaterial is very uniform and no phase separation was observed even after 300 °C annealing. Furthermore, the Sb 2 Te-SiC nanomaterial based PCM cells show fast operation speed of 7 ns and good endurance ability of 2.1 × 10 4 cycles.