Chalcogenide materials and their application to Non-Volatile Memories

Chalcogenide materials are chemical compounds consisting of at least one chalcogen ion, i.e. a chemical element in column VI of the periodic table also known as the oxygen family. More precisely the term chalcogenide refers to the sulphides, selenides, and tellurides. Among the various applications of this class of materials, we review here two types of Non-Volatile Memories (NVM): the Phase Change Memories (PCM) which rely on the rapid crystallisation and high electrical contrast between the amorphous and crystalline phases of some of these compounds, and the Current Bridging Random Access Memories (CBRAM) which make use of the ionic conduction of compounds containing metallic ions.