Design and Fabrication of Dual-Trench Epitaxial Diode Array for High-Density Phase-Change Memory

For the first time, the design and fabrication of dual-trench epitaxial p/n junction diodes in a commercially standard 0.13-μm complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process are introduced in this letter. The 16 × 16 diode arrays with 0.196-μm 2 (5F 2 ) cell size have been successfully fabricated, showing the excellent electrical properties of its sufficient current drive ability in excess of 12.5 mA/μm 2 , large on-/off-current ratio greater than nine orders of magnitude, and its excellent crosstalk immunity. A dual-trench epitaxial diode could be used as the access device for high-density phase-change memory and could also produce highly scalable embedded applications for 45-nm node and beyond, due to its unique process integration scheme.