Empirical investigation of SET seasoning effects in Phase Change Memory arrays

In this work we have investigated the seasoning effect in SET state occurring during cycling of multimegabit Phase Change Memory arrays. The impact of the erasing waveform on this phenomenon has been experimentally evaluated. The physical nature of the phenomenon has been discussed in relation to the electro-thermal characteristics of the active material. The study of such phenomenon is also important to comprehend the transition dynamics of the GST material towards its crystalline state and to develop accurate models allowing an estimate of the PCM cells behavior as a function of the operative cycles.

Research highlights
► We present the SET seasoning phenomenon in Phase Change Memory (PCM) arrays.
► We characterized the SET seasoning in relation to the erasing scheme exploited in PCM.
► We provided a detailed physical explanation to the SET seasoning.
► We defined a quantitative metric for the SET seasoning impact estimation on PCM.