Low-Voltage and High Thermal Stability Single-Element Te Selector with Failed Bit Pruning Operation Enabling Robust Cross-Point Memory

The breakdown (BD) of one-selector-one-resistor memory cells incurs increasing crosstalk and power consumption in the cross-point memory array. In this work, failed bit pruning (FBP) operation of selectors is presented to cope with the side effects due to the BD cells. First, the FBP concept and its requirements on the device parameters is presented. Then the wide existence of FBP operation is demonstrated by investigating five different materials. Among them, the single-element (Te) selector is highlighted. It not only shows high resistance after the prune operation (>50 MΩ) under a low prune voltage (2 V) but also achieves low threshold voltage (1.3 V) and high thermal stability (430 °C). This work demonstrates a new universal character for selector devices to enable robust high-density cross-point memory.