Investigation of Ge-Sn-Te alloy for long data retention and high speed phase change memory application

Ge44Sn14Te42 phase change material exhibits a higher crystallization temperature (∼221 °C), a larger crystallization activation energy (∼2.88 eV) and a better data retention ability (∼126 °C for 10 years) in comparison with those of Ge2Sb2Te5. A reversible switching between set and reset can be realized by an electric pulse as short as 10 ns for Ge44Sn14Te42 based phase change memory (PCM) cell. In addition, PCM based on Ge44Sn14Te42 shows endurance up to 2.7 × 103 cycles with a resistance of about two orders of magnitude on/off ratio.