Nitrogen-doped Ge₃Te₂ materials with self-restricted active region for low power phase-change memory

In this paper, nitrogen-doped Ge₃Te₂ materials have been investigated for low power phase-change memory. Nitrogen incorporated in Ge₃Te₂ increases the crystallization temperature, electrical resistance, and band gap significantly. The introduced GeN _x pile up at the grain-boundaries and suppress the crystal growth of Ge₃Te₂, which further leads to larger crystalline resistance and smaller active region. 10-year data retention of nitrogen-doped Ge₃Te₂ film reaches a peak value with a N₂ flow of 2 sccm, while it decreases sharply as the N₂ flow reaches 3 sccm. This is due to the formation of inhomogeneous nucleation sites at the GeN _x-GeTe interface. Phase-change memory device based on nitrogen-doped Ge₃Te₂ film shows much lower RESET power consumption than that of pure Ge₃Te₂. It's considered that the self-restricted active region and effect of GeN_x microheaters play an important role in cutting down the power consumption.