Stabilizing amorphous Sb by adding alien seeds for durable memory materials

Abstract

The thermal stability of the amorphous phase is a key property of phase-change memory, which limits the data retention time and device reliability. The high thermal stability of memory devices enables their applications in harsh environments and under extreme conditions. Here, we discovered that the alloying of C, Si and Ge significantly improves the stability of amorphous Sb by adding “alien” tetrahedral seeds to the octahedral matrix. This doping strategy impedes the crystallization at elevated temperatures so that the crystallization temperature of Sb is increased by 170–220 °C. The mechanism is systematically investigated by ab initio molecular dynamics simulations and classical crystal growth theory. We confirm that the alien tetrahedral bonds increase the activation energy of atomic migration upon crystallization. Our results demonstrate an effective alloying strategy to improve the thermal stability of phase change memory, paving the way for the design of durable memory devices.