• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.69-69
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• 2009

In other to progress better crystallization transition and long phase-transformation data of phase-change memory (PRAM), we investigated about the effect of Sb doping and Ag ions percolating into Ge-Se-Te phase-change material. Doped Sb concentrations was determined each of 10 wt%, 20 wt% and 30 wt%. As the Sb-doping concentration was increased, the resistivity decreased and the crystallization temperature increased. Ionization of Ag was progressed by DPSS laser (532 nm) for 1 hour. The resistivity was more decreased and the crystallization temperature was more increased in case of adding Ag layer under Sh-(Ge-Se-Te) thin film. At the every condition of thin films included Ag layer more stable states were indicated compare with just Sh-doped Ge-Se-Te thin films.

• The Journal of the Institute of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 2015

During the past 30 years, DRAM has been used for the reasons of economic efficiency of the production. Recently, PRAM has been emerged to overcome the shortcomings of DRAM. In this paper, we propose a technique that can reduce energy consumption by use of a narrow values to the write operation of PRAM. For this purpose, we describe the data compression method using a narrow value and the architecture of PRAM, We also experiment under the Simplescalar 3.0e simulator and SPEC CPU2000 benchmark environments. According to the experiments, the data hit rate of PRAM was increased by 39.4% to 67.7% and energy consumption was reduced by 9.2%. In order to use the proposed technique, it requires 3.12% of space overhead per word, and some additional hardware modules.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2012.02a
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• pp.384-384
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• 2012

PRAM switching device by using current pulse modulation was investigated to verify its possibility for 3D architecture. In this work, two phase change materials connected in series having a different crystallization temperature are used. Its structural for different phase change material was evaluated by electrical resistance. We confirmed that Germanium-Antimony-Tellurium (GST) alloy and Germanium- Copper-Tellurium (GCT) alloy material were selected according to crystallization temperature, ${\sim}180^{\circ}C$ for switching and ${\sim}240^{\circ}C$ for memory devices, respectively. From this research, it is expected that phase change switching device could have advantages of process in terms of material similarity and structural simplification.

• Journal of the Korean Ceramic Society
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• v.44 no.1 s.296
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• pp.18-22
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• 2007

The phase transition behavior of $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$ (GST) thin film, which is a candidate material of recording layer for phase change random access memory (PRAM), has been evaluated using an in-situ reflectance measurement method. The experimental data have been analyzed by using johnson-mehl-avrami-kolomogorov (JMAK) model. JMAK model can be used only in isothermal state. However, temperature changes with time during the operation of PRAM. To apply JMAK equation to PRAM simulation, it has been assumed that the temperature increases stepwise and isothermally. By using JMAK equation and assumption for the transient state, the phase transition behavior of GST thin film has been predicted under $3^{\circ}C/min$ heating rate in this study. The simulation result agrees well with the experimental results. Therefore, It can be concluded that JMAK equation can be used far the PRAM simulation model.

• Journal of the Semiconductor & Display Technology
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.13-17
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• 2009

In PRAM applications, the devices can be made for both binary and multi-state storage. The ability to attain intermediate stages comes either from the fact that some chalcogenide materials can exist in configurations that range from completely amorphous to completely crystalline or from designing device structure such a way that mimics multiple phase chase phenomena in single cell. We have designed stack-structured phase change memory cell which operates as multi-state storage. Amorphous $Ge_xTe_{100-x}$ chalcogenide materials were stacked and a diffusion barrier was chosen for each stack layers. The device is operated by crystallizing each chalcogenide material as sequential manner from the bottom layer to the top layer. The amplitude of current pulse and the duration of pulse width was fixed and number of pulses were controlled to change overall resistance of the phase change memory cell. To optimize operational performance the thickness of each chalcogenide was controlled based on simulation results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.52-52
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• 2009

To date, chalcogenide alloy such as $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$(GST) have not only been rigorously studied for use in Phase Change Random Access Memory(PRAM) applications, but also temperature gap to make different states is not enough to apply to device between amorphous and crystalline state. In this study, we have investigated a new system of phase change media based on the In-Sb-Te(IST) ternary alloys for PRAM. IST chalcogenide thin films were prepared in trench structure (aspect ratio 5:1 of length=500nm, width=100nm) using Tri methyl Indium $(In(CH_3)_4$), $Sb(iPr)_3$ $(Sb(C_3H_7)_3)$ and $Te(iPr)_2(Te(C_3H_7)_2)$ precursors. MOCVD process is very powerful system to deposit in ultra integrated device like 100nm scaled trench structure. And IST materials for PRAM can be grown at low deposition temperature below $200^{\circ}C$ in comparison with GST materials. Although Melting temperature of 1ST materials was $\sim 630^{\circ}C$ like GST, Crystalline temperature of them was ~$290^{\circ}C$; one of GST were $130^{\circ}C$. In-Sb-Te materials will be good candidate materials for PRAM applications. And MOCVD system is powerful for applying ultra scale integration cell.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.918-922
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• 2006

Chalcogenide Phase change memory has the high performance necessary for next-generation memory, because it is a nonvolatile memory with high programming speed, low programming voltage, high sensing margin, low power consumption and long cycle duration. To minimize the power consumption and the program voltage, the new composition material which shows the better phase-change properties than conventional $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$ device has to be needed by accurate material engineering. In the present work, we investigate the basic thermal and the electrical properties due to phase-change compared with chalcogenide-based new composition $Ge_1Se_1Te_2$ material thin film and convetional $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$ PRAM thin film. The fabricated new composition $Ge_1Se_1Te_2$ thin film exhibited a successful switching between an amorphous and a crystalline phase by applying a 950 ns -6.2 V set pulse and a 90 ns -8.2 V reset pulse. It is expected that the new composition $Ge_1Se_1Te_2$ material thin film device will be possible to applicable to overcome the Set/Reset problem for the nonvolatile memory device element of PRAM instead of conventional $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$ device.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2006

The changes of the electrical conductivity in chalcogenide amorphous semiconductors, $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$, have been studied. A phase change random access memory (PRAM) device without an access transistor is successfully fabricated with the $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$-phase-change resistor, which has much higher electrical resistivity than $Ge_{2}Sb_{2}Te_{5}$ and its electric resistivity can be varied by the factor of $10^5$ times, relating with the degree of crystallization. 100 nm thick $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$ thin film was formed by vacuum deposition at $1.5{\times}10^{-5}$ Torr. The static mode switching (DC test) is tested for the $100\;{\mu}m-sized$ $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$ PRAM device. In the first sweep, the amorphous $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$ thin film showed a high resistance state at low voltage region. However, when it reached to the threshold voltage, $V_{th}$, the electrical resistance of device was drastically reduced through the formation of an electrically conducting path. The pulsed mode switching of the $20{\mu}m-sized$ $Ge_{1}Se_{1}Te_{2}$ PRAM device showed that the reset of device was done with a 80 ns-8.6 V pulse and the set of device was done with a 200 ns-4.3 V pulse.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.80-81
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• 2005

Chalcogenide phase change memory has high performance to be next generation memory, because it is a nonvolatile memory processing high programming speed, low programming voltage, high sensing margin, low consumption and long cycle duration. We have developed a sample of PRAM with thermal protected layer. We have investigated the phase transition behaviors in function of process factor including thermal protect layer. As a result, we have observed that set voltage and duration of protect layer are more improved than no protect layer.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.363-369
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• 2017

Phase-change random access memory (PRAM) has been emerged as a potential memory due to its excellent scalability, non-volatility, and random accessibility. But, as the cell current is reducing due to cell size scaling, the read-sensing window margin is also decreasing due to increased variation of cell performance distribution, resulting in a substantial loss of yield. To cope with this problem, a novel adaptive read-sensing reference current generation scheme is proposed, whose trimming range and resolution are adaptively controlled depending on process conditions. Performance evaluation in a 58-nm CMOS process indicated that the proposed read-sensing reference current scheme allowed the integral nonlinearity (INL) to be improved from 10.3 LSB to 2.14 LSB (79% reduction), and the differential nonlinearity (DNL) from 2.29 LSB to 0.94 LSB (59% reduction).