Investigation of First Fire Effect on VTH Stability and

Endurance in GeCTe Selector

P. C. Chang, P. J. Liao, D. W. Heh, C. Lee, D. H. Hou, E. Ambrosi, C. H. Wu,
H. Y. Lee, J. H. Lee, and X. Y. Bao
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd., Hsinchu, Taiwan
2022 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) | 978-1-6654-7950-9/22/$31.00 ©2022 IEEE | DOI: 10.1109/IRPS48227.2022.9764489

E-mail: pcchango@tsmc.com

Abstract—Ovonic Threshold Switching Selector faces challenges

of VTH stability in intensive applications due to relaxation and
the degradation upon endurance cycling. This work investigates
the first fire (FF) voltage effects and mechanisms related to the
switching characteristics on GeCTe-based selectors. Higher VTH
stability and more uniform Ioff-VTH control during endurance
cycling were achieved by higher FF design. A power-law model
with strong correlation between endurance and pulse-energy
was also demonstrated in this study.

Index Terms-- Selector, GeCTe, Stability, Relaxation, Cycling

degradation, Endurance, Acceleration.

I. INTRODUCTION
Ovonic Threshold Switching (OTS) device has been
demonstrated to be a promising candidate for high density
memory applications. However, VTH stability and endurance
concerns remain for selector applications due to relaxation Fig. 1. (a) TEM and schematic image of GeCTe (GCT) selector
behavior and defect creation upon switching cycling [1-4]. device with an integrated series resistance connecting. (b) Pulse
While it usually takes large effort to improve performance sequence of endurance cycling followed by switching (SW) & DC
from process, first fire (FF) as a necessary initialization measurements. Noted that FF is necessary before operation on fresh
samples.
procedure in chalcogenide selectors has been reported to
establish a stable conductive filament for device operation [5].
Recently we have reported the weak geometry effect after FF
filament formation in GeCTe (GCT) devices [6-7].
In this paper, we study the FF voltage effects on switching
characteristics, relaxation and degradation upon cycling. The
localized and delocalized defect density has strong
relationship with FF voltage. The endurance model and its
failure mechanism under various bias are also investigated.

II. EXPERIMENTAL
Figure 1a shows the TEM image of GCT chalcogenide
selector device with Tungsten as the top and bottom electrodes.
The device configuration used in this study was illustrated in
the inset with one load resistor connected to the bottom
electrode of the selector. The VTH and endurance
characteristics procedure are illustrated in Fig. 1b with the use
of Agilent B1500A system followed by the sequence of FF,
pulses cycling and switching monitoring (triangular pulses
with rise/fall time=10usec) periodically. The off-state current
(Ioff) is also monitored by DC 0.5V bias to evaluate the
endurance lifetime to fail after repeated cycling.
A. First Fire Effect on VTH stability
Switching characteristics of a representative GCT selector
is shown in Fig. 2, in which the selector is initialized by FF
around 2.3 V (pristine turn-on voltage). The following turn-on
Fig. 2. Typical switching characteristics in selector device.
threshold voltage (VTH) at 1.3 V and turn-off hold voltage (VH)
at 0.9 V. A possible FF and switching mechanism of selector
is adopted as illustrated in Fig. 3 [1-4]. First, the delocalized
fast and slow defects are created to form a filament connecting
between electrodes at turn-on stage during the strong bias of
FF. Once the applied voltage is removed, delocalized fast
defects are localized immediately, which leads to filament
mitigation and selector switched-off. It is worth pointing out
that the switched-off selector retains a weaker filament under
off-state because it takes more time to localize slow defects to
fresh state. The progress of slow defect localization from turn-
off state to fresh state is reflected on VTH relaxation.

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 Figure 4 (a-b) shows the selector characteristics after
different FF conditions. Decreased VTH and off-state
resistance (Roff) are observed in higher FF voltage. This
suggests tunable VTH for selector operation by controlling FF
voltage. To investigate the impact of FF voltage on relaxation
characteristics, different delay time is interspersed between 1st
and 2nd switching monitor as shown in Fig. 5a. Larger than
200 mV VTH drift occurred after 103 seconds delay is observed
under the condition of 2.5 V FF (Fig. 5b). The monotonic VTH
increase along with delay time is shown in Fig. 5c [2 ,8] under
various FF. Furthermore, the VTH drift slope reduces from 49
to 20 mV/dec with higher FF. It demonstrates that higher FF
voltage is helpful to stabilize selector VTH. The impact of FF
voltage on switching characteristic can be explained by the
amount of retained defects as illustrated in Fig. 6. Higher FF
with the creation of more delocalized slow defects will enlarge

Fig. 5. (a) After FF, different delay time is interspersed between 1 st

and 2nd switching (SW) monitor. (b) Switching characteristics of
selector device in 1st (dash) and 2nd (solid) SW monitor with 103 s
delay time. (c) VTH as a function of delay time with different FF
voltage.

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of selector model during First Fire,

switch and delay operation.

Fig. 6. Schematic diagram of (a) on-state (b) off-state selector model

after low and high FF. High FF create more slow-defect and result in
increased Ioff accompany with reduced defect changed percentage
for better VTH stability.
the filament and lead to higher Ioff while lower FF will reduce
delocalized slow defect for lower Ioff (Fig. 4b). Regarding to
VTH stability by high FF (Fig. 5c), the influenced proportion of
localized defect is expected to be reduced in the enlarged
filaments and then enhance VTH stability.

B. First Fire Effect on Endurance

Fig. 4. (a) Switching characteristics of selector device after FF
voltage from 2.5 to 5 V. (b) With increased operating FF voltage,
decreased VTH and Roff (inset) are observed, indicating tunable VTH
for selector operation.
Besides VTH stability discussed above, another issue
associated with selectors FF is endurance. Under endurance
measurement (Fig. 1b), endurance is determined by cycle-to-
fail as devices lose switching capability after repeated cycling
and result in abrupt Roff drop and VTH reduction as shown in
Fig. 7 (a-b). Considering VTH drift, delay time dependent
endurance is discussed in Fig. 8. The weak dependence of
endurance on delay time suggests a high defect generation
upon endurance stress and the inhibition of device relaxation

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Fig. 7. (a) Switching characteristics after different number of cycling
operation. (b) Roff and VTH as a function of cycling number with
pulse-energy of 14 and 30 pJ. Abrupt Roff drop and VTH reduction
are observed after endurance failure.
Fig. 8. Endurance failure cycle as a function of delay time
interspersed between cycling pulses reveals relaxation independence
behavior.
Fig. 9. Endurance failure cycle as a function of pulse-width with
better fitting in power law equation.
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[1]. The pulse-width effect on GCT selector endurance is also
discussed in Fig. 9. The endurance cycle-to-fail as a function
of pulse-width follows a power-law dependence with the
power of -1, suggesting equivalent effective stress time upon
cycling. It supports again that cumulative pulse-width stress
dominates endurance failure upon different delay time.
The endurance cycle-to-fail as a function of pulse-energy
is discussed in Fig. 10a, which can be described well by the
power-law relationship with a fitted power-factor n~-1.8.
Accordingly, we can project up to 1013 cycles at 1 pJ pulse-
energy cycling condition. The weak ambient temperature
dependent endurance shown in the inset suggests that the heat
generated by pulse is much higher than the ambient
temperature in experiment. TEM analysis on endurance
exercised sample reveals element segregation and partial
crystallization in GCT layer as shown in Fig. 10b. We
conclude that selector endurance failure can be attributed to
segregation and crystallization accelerated by high pulse-
energy endurance cycling stress in GCT layer.
With the validation of pulse-energy dependent endurance
model, it is reasonable to explain the negligible FF voltage
impact on endurance failure in Fig. 11 based on the much
lower cumulative energy in FF than endurance cycling.
However, the influence of FF voltage on VTH and Roff upon
repeated cycling cannot be ignored before endurance failure.
Selector switching characteristic drift is observed in Fig. 12a
with the degradation of VTH and Roff after 109 cycling pulses.
Fig. 10. (a) Endurance failure cycle as a function of pulse energy in
power-law equation. The inset show ambient temperature
independent endurance at 25℃ and 105℃ with different current
stress. (b) TEM images of cycled failure device. It becomes non-
uniform, partially crystallized with elements segregation.
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 Fig. 11. VTH as a function of cycles number reveals FF independence
behavior.
Fig. 12. (a) Switching characteristics of selector devices before (dash)
and after (solid) 109 continuous cycling operation. (b) The shift of
VTH as a function of continuous cycling number under different FF
voltage, less VTH drift is observed in higher FF.
Fig. 12b shows the comparison of VTH shift upon endurance
cycling under different FF voltage, less VTH drift is observed
with higher FF. As a result, a much tighter Ioff-VTH distribution
is achieved by high FF (Fig. 13), demonstrating the advantage
of uniformity control. Based on the discussion of FF
dependent VTH drift (Fig. 5c), it is reasonable to explain the
high FF Ioff-VTH uniformity improvement during pulse stress
could be attributed to the lower influenced portion of created
defects in enlarged filament. The observed universal
correlation between Ioff and VTH in Fig. 13 demonstrates that
GCT endurance experienced same mechanism across different
FF and cycling bias condition [10].
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Fig. 13. Ioff-VTH distribution of selector devices during 109
continuous cycling operation under different FF voltage. The
universal correlation is demonstrated in different FF and cycling bias
condition.
III. CONCLUSIONS
In this work, FF voltage effects are investigated for GCT
selectors on VTH stability and selector characteristic during
endurance stress. Here, high voltage FF is demonstrated to
improve VTH stability and device shift (VTH & Roff) during
endurance cycling with the hypothesis of more retained
defects and enlarged filament after FF. GCT endurance
experienced the same mechanism across different FF and
cycling bias condition is proved based on universal Ioff and
VTH correlation upon repeated cycling. Meanwhile, FF voltage
has negligible effect on endurance cycle-to fail. The endurance
cycle-to-fail as a function of pulse-energy is shown to follow
power-law relationship. GCT endurance is predicted up to 1013
cycles based on 1 pJ pulse-energy cycling condition.
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