Investigation of thermoelectric heat transport adding peltier effect on stabilizing intermediate resistance level for a nanoscale square heater contact electrode phase change memory device

Abstract

Phase change memory (PCM) with having high signal to noise ratio, GHz scale write, low power consumption and read rates, scalability, long term reliability are being considered one of the candidates for future data storage technologies. However, without understanding the behavior of thermoelectric heat transport effect with Peltier effect, constructing a 3D finite element modeling is not completed to visualize the complex nature of phase switching dynamics of a phase change material of a PCM device, especially for square like heater electrode causing heterogeneous phase distribution. With this study, I report the investigation of thermoelectric heat transport adding Peltier effect for nanoscale square contact electrode phase change memory device. Therefore, I constructed a 3D finite element modelling by using multiphysics approach to cover electrical, thermal, phase change kinetics, percolation effect and especially thermoelectric effect with Thomson and Peltier effect. With square heater electrode, anisotropic heating profile was obtained for the cases of with thermoelectric heat transport and without thermoelectric heat transport. Normally, square like heater electrode PCM devices has a middle resistance level due to mixture phase of crystalline and amorphous phase. However, in this study, depending on thermoelectric effect, an abrupt switching was observed in without case, although in the thermoelectric heat transport case a stable middle resistance level was obtained. Therefore, this is an evidence of importance of thermoelectric heat transport effect to construct a correct 3D finite element model of a nanoscale square like heater electrode PCM device. This model successfully foresees the necessity of thermoelectric effect to design a PCM device leading to ultra-high density data storage applications.