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Chalcogenide phase-change memory nanotubes for lower writing current operation

This article has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text article. 2011 Nanotechnology 22 254012 (http://iopscience.iop.org/0957-4484/22/25/254012) View the table of contents for this issue, or go to the journal homepage for more

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IOP PUBLISHING Nanotechnology 22 (2011) 254012 (7pp)

NANOTECHNOLOGY doi:10.1088/0957-4484/22/25/254012

Chalcogenide phase-change memory nanotubes for lower writing current operation

Yeonwoong Jung, Rahul Agarwal, Chung-Ying Yang and Ritesh Agarwal
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA E-mail: riteshag@seas.upenn.edu

Received 4 October 2010, in nal form 26 November 2010 Published 16 May 2011 Online at stacks.iop.org/Nano/22/254012 Abstract We report the synthesis and characterization of Sb-doped Te-rich nanotubes, and study their memory switching properties under the application of electrical pulses. Te-rich nanotubes display signicantly low writing currents due to their small cross-sectional areas, which is desirable for power-efcient memory operation. The nanotube devices show limited resistance ratio and cyclic switching capability owing to the intrinsic properties of Te. The observed memory switching properties of this new class of nanostructured memory elements are discussed in terms of fundamental materials properties and extrinsic geometrical effects. (Some gures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)

1. Introduction
Chalcogenide phase-change materials, such as GeSbTe alloys, have been widely used for phase-change memory (PCM) applications. The operating principle of PCM is based on the reversible change between crystalline and amorphous phases of phase-change materials. Each structural phase represents a distinct electronic state with low/high resistance respectively, which are used for data storage [1, 2]. The phase-change is introduced by applying electrical pulses which induce Joule-heating of the materials where the pulse amplitudes and duration times determine the resulting phases [1, 2]. Efcient PCM devices should optimize several complex properties, such as small form factor, low power consumption, fast switching speed, and data nonvolatility. In conventional thin-lm PCMs, the most critical issue lies in reducing the writing current which is required to melt and subsequently quench phase-change materials for amorphization [35]. The high writing current is a major concern in PCM as it causes large power consumption for switching, which can have secondary effects such as slower switching speed and poor device reliability, with these problems becoming more pronounced with aggressive scaledown of devices [35]. The writing current is a function of a variety of intrinsic material properties such as phase
0957-4484/11/254012+07$33.00

transition temperatures and electric/thermal conductivities, as well as extrinsic geometrical factors determined by the physical dimensions of the device for charge and heat transport [3, 6]. Signicant efforts have been made to lower the writing currents in PCM devices, which have been mainly pursued in two major directions: (1) design of new phasechange materials with optimized chemical compositions and crystalline structures [79], and (2) conguration of novel device geometries and architectures that realize effective current and heat localization for optimized Joule-heating. Efforts in the area of new materials have also led to the synthesis and assembly of nanostructured phase-change materials and devices, such as nanowires [1014] and nanodots [15, 16]. The new device architecture of thin-lm PCMs has been directed towards reducing the cross-sectional area for localized current and heat transport in phase-change materials, and these approaches include the connement of phase-change materials [17, 18] and laterally designed, bridge-type PCM devices [19, 20]. In particular, ring-type electrodes designed to reduce the contact areas with phasechange materials [21, 22] have led to signicant reduction of writing currents in the current thin-lm PCM technology. Recently developed self-assembled phase-change nanowires offer great advantages in both of these
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aspects [1214, 23, 24]. The facile synthesis with control over the nanowire thickness enables the investigation of the fundamental size-limit of operation of phase-change devices in the regime where conventional thin-lm lithography techniques have major difculties due to substantial material damage [1113]. Signicantly, nanowires of smaller crosssectional areas have been found to be efcient in lowering the writing currents and power consumption [12, 13] as well as accompanying size-dependent change of material properties [13, 24], memory switching characteristics [12, 13] and size-dependent electrical drift characteristics [25]. Experimental [35] and theoretical [6, 2628] studies on thin-lm PCMs have also reported the reduction of writing currents with decreasing device size. The unique control of the size [29], geometry, and chemical composition [30] based on the bottomup assembly technique suggests exciting opportunities to develop novel phase-change nanostructured materials in new geometries that could further reduce writing currents. Research efforts in thin-lms and nanostructured materials suggest that reducing the cross-sectional areas of phase-change materials and contacting electrodes is a promising approach to realize the commercialization of PCM technology. In this regard, the use of intrinsically tubular phase-change materials with reduced contact areas and its direct integration onto the metal electrodes would be ideal, but is technically very challenging. Among a variety of elements being used for phase-change materials, Te is by far the oldest material developed for electrical switching [1, 2]. Importantly, Te has a unique advantage of intrinsically forming tubular structures due to its anisotropic bonding nature [31]. Nevertheless, the intrinsically low phase transition temperatures of Te have made it difcult for reliable memory switching applications, which has been resolved by the addition of other elements such as Ge and Sb to form more stable phase-change materials [13]. In this paper, we report the synthesis of Sb-doped Te nanotubes and study their phase-change memory switching behavior. We have combined the inherent tendency of Te to form tubular structures and the doping effect of Sb to enable reliable memory switching and phase stability in Terich nanotubes. Sb-doped Te nanotubes (Sb < 8 at.%) are synthesized by a chemical vapor transport (CVT) method. We demonstrate that reliable memory switching is feasible in these nanotubes as signied by large resistance change upon the application of electrical pulses. Signicantly reduced writing currents have been observed in the nanotube memory devices compared to previously studied phase-change nanowires, such as GeTe [12] and Ge2 Sb2 Te5 [13] with solid cross-sections. The small writing currents obtained for the nanotube devices are explained based on the low melting temperature of Terich materials as well as the unique geometry of the nanotube structures which leads to effective heat localization for efcient Joule-heating.

powder in the mid-stream with Te powder at the upstream, and Si powder at the downstream side. The furnace was then heated up to 420 C which corresponds to the local temperatures of Sb and Te being 420 C and 300 C respectively, and the temperature for Si growth substrate in a range of 250160 C, as calibrated by a thermocouple. The reaction was maintained for 1 h under continuous Ar gas ow at 40 SCCM with the base pressure of the furnace at 80 Torr. The morphology and the chemical composition of the synthesized nanotubes were characterized using x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS)-scanning TEM (STEM). As-grown nanotubes were rst mechanically transferred onto SiOx (400 nm thermal oxide)/Si substrates (silicon sense). The nanotube memory switching devices were then fabricated using focused ionbeam (FIB) with e-beam/ion-beam assisted Pt-deposition for contact patterning [12]. The electrical measurements were carried out in ambient conditions in a home-built probe station. The input voltage pulses were applied by a pulse generator (Keithley 3401), and the dc currentvoltage ( I V ) characteristics were characterized (Keithley 2602) through a switching box (Keithley 2700).

3. Results and discussion

Nanotubes with hollow hexagonal cross-sections were found densely grown over a large area of the growth substrate as seen in the SEM images (gures 1(a)(e)). The structure of the nanotubes was found to be dependent on the temperature of the growth substrate. The nanotubes observed at higher temperature regions of the growth substrate (>230 C) are generally long (several m), with thicker outer diameters (>500 nm), and stand vertically out of the substrate (gures 1(a) and (b)). At lower growth substrate temperatures (200 C for gures 1(c) and (d) and 160 C for gure 1(e)), the nanotubes become shorter and thinner (below 70 nm outer diameters in gure 1(c)) but still retain their hollow inner structure. The chemical composition of the nanotubes was characterized by EDS-STEM. STEM elemental mapping images of the nanotubes reveal uniform spatial distribution of Sb and Te on individual nanotubes (gure 2(a)), while the EDS line-spectrum from single nanotubes displays a bimodal distribution of Sb and Te (gure 2(b)) across their widths. EDS point scanning experiments further conrm the presence of Sb with concentration in a typical range of 48 at.%. The XRD pattern of the as-grown nanotubes favorably matches with that of pure Te in the hexagonal crystal structure (JCPDS 36-1452) (gure 2(c)). HRTEM (gure 2(d)) of a single nanotube shows the highly resolved lattice fringes with spacing of 0.59 nm along the nanotube growth direction which corresponds to the [001] axis of hexagonal Te, as further conrmed by indexed fast-Fourier-transform (FFT). This result suggests that the unique nanotube structure is determined solely by the intrinsic structural characteristics of crystalline Te with Sb atoms occupying interstitial sites, similar to our earlier report on Ge-doped Sb nanowires [32]. It is well 2

2. Experimental details
Sb-doped Te nanotubes were synthesized by a one-step thermal evaporation of chalcogenide powders. We used a horizontal tube furnace with a single temperature zone and placed Sb

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Figure 1. SEM images of (a) and (b) vertically standing Sb-doped Te nanotubes with high density grown at 240 C; (c) and (d) Sb-doped Te nanotubes grown at 200 C to show hollowed inner structure with hexagonal cross-sections; (e) thin Sb-doped Te nanotubes grown at 160 C.

Figure 2. (a) STEM elemental mapping images showing uniform spatial distribution of Sb (middle panel, green) and Te (right panel, yellow) in the nanotubes; scale bar = 300 nm. (b) The EDS line-scan spectrum shows the bimodal prole of Sb and Te. (c) XRD pattern obtained from the nanotubes which can be indexed to hexagonal Te structure. (d) HRTEM image of an isolated nanotube showing that the tubes grow along the [001] axis.

known that hexagonal Te possesses highly anisotropic growth tendency along its c-axis due to its propensity to form twodimensional chain-like bonding coupled with weak van-derWaals interaction along the a -axis [3336]. In fact, we note that using Sb and Te powders for our synthesis failed 3

to synthesize nanotubes of stoichiometric SbTe compounds, such as Sb2 Te3 . As the evaporation rate of Sb increases with increased temperature and/or larger amounts of Sb powders being used, the majority of the structures are found to be a mixture of nano- or microscale crystals and some solid

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Figure 3. (a) SEM image of Sb2 Te3 nanowires grown with higher Sb evaporation rates. Growth of nanotubes with Sb2 Te3 or other compositions was not observed under these conditions. (b) XRD pattern of the nanotubes which matches with stoichiometric Sb2 Te3 .

Figure 4. (a) A dc I V sweep of a FIB-fabricated nanotube memory device with 200 nm outer diameter (inset) representing the switching behavior from initial crystalline (red) to form the amorphous phase (blue) after a voltage pulse is applied. (b) The variation of resistance upon the application of crystallization (red, 500 ns) and amorphous voltage pulses (blue, 100 ns) with increasing amplitudes. (c), (d) Cyclic resistance change between RESET (red) and SET (blue) states of another nanotube device (outer diameter 350 nm), (c) after the rst 35 cycles and (d) until the RESET resistance suddenly drops to the SET state after 143 cycles leading to device failure.

nanowires, but no nanotubes are observed when the Sb content exceeds 12 at.%. This observation indicates that an introduction of Sb promotes the radial growth of Tebased structures, and only a small concentration of Sb can be accommodated while maintaining the single-crystalline structure of Te-based nanotubes. Further control over the chemical composition and morphology can be obtained by growth under highly non-equilibrium conditions, using cationexchange phenomena [37] or solution-based methods using Te nanotubes as sacricial templates. Different growth parameters (temperature, ow rate, and pressure) lead to different structures and compositions. In fact, by locally increasing the evaporation rate of Sb, we 4

grow nanowires instead of nanotubes given that the same amounts of precursors are used. Separate evaporation of Sb and Te at 530 and 200 C under 40 SCCM and a base pressure of 20 Torr leads to the formation of stoichiometric Sb2 Te3 nanowires. SEM images (gure 3(a)) clearly show very thin (3050 nm) nanowires produced from the above condition, while XRD diffraction (gure 3(b)) well matches with stoichiometric Sb2 Te3 (JCPDS 015-0874), consistent with previous studies [38]. We investigated the memory switching characteristics of SbTe nanotubes under the application of electrical pulses. We carefully fabricated two-terminal devices by depositing Pt on both ends of the nanotubes by using FIB (10 pA,

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30 keV) and ensured that the nanotubes did not collapse under our deposition conditions (gure 4(a) inset). The dc I V sweep (gure 4(a)) of the nanotube device of 200 nm outer diameter in its initial crystalline phase shows linear I V behavior (red line) with low electrical resistance (30 k ). Meanwhile, the dc I V characteristics of the nanotube device after the application of an amorphization voltage pulse (4 V, 100 ns) show a much higher resistance (151 k ), which upon applying higher voltage displays a threshold switching (at 1.6 V) and recovers the linear I V of the crystalline state, indicating the amorphous-to-crystalline phase-change. Figure 4(b) shows the variation of resistance of the device under the application of crystallization and amorphous voltage pulses respectively with increasing amplitudes: 500 ns duration for crystalline (red line) and 100 ns for amorphous (blue line). The resistance ratio between the high and low resistive states is 67 times, which is signicantly lower than 102 or 103 of the previously studied phase-change Ge2 Sb2 Te5 and GeTe nanowires [1113], which are of different chemical compositions. We also tested a large number of devices, and observed that the ratio of the resistance change is typically 57 times. The small resistance ratio is due to the low intrinsic resistivity value at the amorphous (RESET) state, which is typically much smaller than the RESET resistivity of GeTe and Ge2 Sb2 Te5 nanowire materials. The low resistance of the amorphous state is most probably due to the low activation energy of conduction resulting from the intrinsic band structure of Te-based materials with properties dominated by the presence of lone pairs [39] and, due to this, the amorphous phase of pure Te is very unstable at room temperature and easily relaxes back to the crystalline phase [3941]. The stability of the amorphous phase can be enhanced by the introduction of a small amount of semiconductor materials with high melting temperatures such as Ge and Sb, as these elements can increase the phase transition temperatures [42]. In the case of the GeTe system, the crystallization temperature of pure Te increases by over 70 C with the introduction of Ge (8% or more) and a reliable multiple switching between crystalline and amorphous phases has been shown [39]. Even though the resistance ratio is not very high in the Te-rich nanotube devices, the electrical switching is found to be reversible. Figures 4(c) and (d) show the resistance variation of another nanotube device under the cyclic application of crystallization (2.9 V, 500 ns) and amorphization (4.2 V, 100 ns) voltages pulses. The resistance ratio between high/low resistive states is maintained to 5 7 throughout the measurement (gure 4(c)), and after 133 cycles the resistance of the high resistive state signicantly drops and becomes stuck with that of the crystalline phase (gure 4(d)). The low endurance of these materials could be due to geometrical and/or compositional changes such as ion migration or oxidation, which may locally produce Te-rich regions that make the amorphization process difcult due to rapid recrystallization. One important nding for the nanotube devices is that the writing current for amorphization is much lower than the values obtained in the previous studies with GeTe and Ge2 Sb2 Te5 nanowires with similar outer diameters of 5

200 nm [12, 13]. The writing current for amorphization is determined by the writing voltage pulse

Iwrite = Vwrite /Rdy

where Vwrite represents the writing voltage pulse for amorphization determined from the programming curve in gure 4(b), and Rdy denotes the dynamic resistance which represents the resistance of a memory cell while it is being programmed to the high-resistance state [43]. This value is generally different from the SET state resistance (which is after a transition to the SET state) if a signicant S-type snap back resistance change is observed during the threshold switching, which is not the case for the present experiment. This value is determined by the slope of the dc I V curve in the regime where the measured current, I , asymptotically approaches a straight line [43]; from gures 4(a) and (b), Vwrite = 3.5 V, and Rdy = 11.8 k . The writing current for the nanotube device is determined to be 0.29 mA while the writing currents for GeTe and Ge2 Sb2 Te5 nanowires of the comparable outer diameter of 200 nm are a 4.0 mA, and 1.4 mA respectively [12, 13]. This low writing current of the Te-rich nanotube is comparable to the writing current obtained for 50 nm Ge2 Sb2 Te5 nanowires [13]. The observed low writing current can be quantitatively understood based on the steady-state, one-dimensional heat transport equation. For the one-dimensional, cylindrical geometry of phase-change materials, such as nanowires with radius r and length L , the heat transport equation is expressed d2 by k d XT2 = J 2 , where J is the current density ( J = I /r 2 ), k and are the thermal conductivity and the electrical resistivity of the phase-change nanowires respectively [13]. A steady-state solution to this equation is given by I =
r 2 2k T (R L ) , where R and r are the outer and inner radii of the nanotube and T is the temperature change from room temperature to the phase transition temperatures. This analysis suggests that the most important factor for lowering writing currents in nanotubes in comparison to nanowires of equal outer diameters with a given length is the smaller cross-sectional area [27, 28]. We note that the above simple heat transport model does not consider the heat loss from the nanowire interfaces, and does not accurately explain the actual heat transport process; the actual temperature prole in the radial direction of the nanotube deviates from the predicted parabolic characteristic and becomes atter when the surface heat conduction is taken into account [44]. Nevertheless, we believe that our simple model stresses the importance of the geometrical effect on the heat transport process which has a signicant effect on the phase-change phenomena in our nanotube devices. Besides the geometrical effect, intrinsic materials properties contribute to determining the writing currents as well; materials of higher electrical resistivity and lower thermal conductivity are efcient for lowering writing currents with smaller cross-sectional areas given the same length. Based on the analysis, the low melting temperature of Te-rich nanotubes coupled with their reduced cross-sectional areas over nanowires of solid cross-sections are believed to be
2 2

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critical in lowering the writing currents, while the exact values for the thermal conductivity and the electrical resistivity of these unique materials are not available in the literature. Another factor that needs to be taken into account is that intrinsic material properties may change at the nanoscale. In the cylindrical geometry of nanostructured materials, theoretical and experimental studies have shown that the thermal conductivity decreases with the reduction of crosssectional area [4547] due to the increased contribution of the surface scattering with an enhanced surface-to-volume ratio. Moreover, it is also known that hollowed nanostructures, such as nanotubes, generally possess smaller thermal conductivity than solid cylindrical nanowires of equivalent cross-sectional areas [48, 49]. This further reduction of thermal conductivity is due to the additional lattice scattering from the inner surface of the nanotubes with enhanced surface-to-volume ratio, as predicted by theories and also supported by experimental results [48, 49]. Such enhanced lattice scattering also often leads to higher electrical resistivity with nanostructures of smaller cross-sectional areas [50, 51]. Although the measurement of the thermal conductivity of Te-rich nanotubes has not been attempted in the present experiment, it is likely that the material property change would become pronounced with extreme-size scaling, which would contribute to further lowering of writing currents in these uniquely structured memory elements. In addition, we would like to note that the enhanced surface scattering from chalcogenide nanotubes, combined with high electrical conductivity, can also lead to highly efcient thermoelectric devices, an area of current interest [52].

References
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4. Conclusion
In conclusion, we have synthesized a new class of nanostructured memory materials based on Sb-doped Terich nanotubes by a thermal evaporation method and studied their memory switching properties under an application of electric pulses. Te-rich nanotubes display signicantly low writing currents which is desirable for power-efcient memory operation, while the performance for the resistance ratio and the cyclic switching is currently limited. The observed switching characteristics are explained based on the intrinsic material properties of Te-based materials as well as the geometric contribution from the hollow nanotube structures effective for heat connement and localization. Further improvements in material and device properties can be obtained by co-doping these tubes with Ge or other elements that can increase the resistivity and stability of the amorphous state. We believe that further work in developing new compositions of nanotubular phase-change materials will be important to develop nanostructured phase-change memory devices and for understanding the ultimate size scaling effects on memory switching in chalcogenide materials.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ONR (Grant No. N000140910116), [39] Materials Structures and Devices Center at MIT, NSF (DMR0706381 and DMR-1002164), and Penn-MRSEC (DMR05- [40] [41] 20020). 6

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