Simultaneously high thermal stability and ultra-fast phase change speed based on samarium-doped antimony thin films

Abstract

The trade-off between crystallization speed and thermal stability has been a challenge to improve the performance of phase change memory. Herein, we propose samarium (Sm)-doped antimony (Sb) materials, in which the Sm doping influences the thermal stability to simultaneously realize high thermal stability and ultra-fast phase change speed. We show that slight Sm doping (<3%) can improve the crystallization temperature (Tc) up to 242 °C and their relevant 10 year data retention up to 159 °C with an ultra-fast speed of ∼2 ns. The high performance of Sm doped Sb thin film was attributed to the formation of Sm-Sb bonds measured by XPS. These results suggest that the Sm doped Sb materials are promising candidates for phase change memory, and the rare-earth (RE) doping-induced improvement in performance could be extended to other chalcogenide films.