Pt-Sb₂Te as high speed phase-change materials with excellent thermal stability

Abstract Phase change memory (PCM) has been regarded as one of the most promising candidates for the next-generation nonvolatile memory. In this paper, we propose PtSb₂Te (PST) phase change material for phase change memory. The doping of Pt improves the crystallization temperature and Ten-year data-retention temperature of Sb₂Te to 180 °C, 192 °C, 204 °C and 117 °C,123 °C,137 °C, and refines the grain to about 10 nm. At the same time, the density change of Sb₂Te film after phase transition is reduced to 4.19% due to the addition of Pt. There are no other new phases formed in PST film except hexagonal Sb₂Te phase. For PST-based phase change memory cell, only 10 ns electrical pulse is required to complete the reversible operation with a Reset voltage lower than 4.3 V. At the same time, the number of cycle operations of the memory cell exceeds 10⁵ and it has a lower resistance drift coefficient as 0.019.