Low-bias electron transport properties of germanium telluride ultrathin films

TL;DR

This study investigates the electronic transport in ultrathin germanium telluride films, revealing size-dependent conductance behavior and the fundamental scaling limits for phase change memory devices.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed ab initio analysis of size effects on electron transport in GeTe ultrathin films, identifying the ultimate scaling limit due to MIGS overlap.

Findings

a-GeTe retains a band gap down to 38 Å thickness

Conductance increases sharply when a-GeTe band gap disappears

Scaling limit of phase change memory set by MIGS overlap

Abstract

The nanometer-scale size-dependent electronic transport properties of crystalline (c-) and amorphous (a-) germanium telluride (GeTe) ultrathin films sandwiched by titanium nitride (TiN) electrodes are investigated using ab initio molecular dynamics (AIMD), density functional theory (DFT), and Green's function calculations. We find that a-GeTe ultrathin films scaled down to about 38 Angstrom (12 atomic layers) still shows a band gap and the electrical conductance is mainly due to electron transport via intra-gap states. If the ultrathin films are further scaled, the a-GeTe band gap disappears due to overlap of the two metal induced gap states (MIGS) regions near the TiN electrodes, leading to sharp increase of a-GeTe conductance and significant decrease of c-GeTe/a-GeTe conductance ratio. The c-GeTe/a-GeTe conductance ratio drops below one order of magnitude if the ultrathin films are scaled below about 33 Angstrom, making it difficult to reliably perform read operations in thin film based phase change memory devices. This overlap of the MIGS regions sets up the ultimate scaling limit of phase change memory technology. Our results suggest that the ultimate scaling limit can be pushed to even smaller size, by using phase change material (PCM) with larger amorphous phase band gap than a-GeTe.