The Role of Arsenic in the Operation of Electrical Threshold Switches

Abstract Arsenic is one of the most frequently used elements for doping conventional silicon-based semiconductors and particularly in emerging phase-change-memory (PCM) chips, yet the detailed functional mechanism as well as its experimental demonstration is still lacking in the latter in spite of its wide application. Here, we fabricate chalcogenide-based ovonic threshold switching (OTS) selectors, which are essential units for suppressing sneak currents in 3D PCM arrays, with various As concentrations. We discovered that incorporation of 20 at. % As brings a more than 100 ℃ increase in crystallization temperature, remarkably improving the switching repeatability and prolonging the device lifetime. These benefits arise from strengthened As-S bonds and sluggish atomic migration after As incorporation, as demonstrated by molecular-dynamics simulations. As a result, the addition of As reduces the leakage current by more than an order of magnitude and significantly suppresses the operational voltage drift, ultimately enabling a backend-of-the-line (BEOL)-compatible OTS selector with > 12 MA/cm2 on-current, >104 on/off ratio, ~ 10 ns speed, and a lifetime approaching 1010 cycles after 450 ℃ annealing. These performance enhancements can be explained by an As-induced increase of the band gap and of trap states, as determined by experimental photothermal deflection spectroscopy. Mechanistically, this is due to abundant defect states associated with Ge-Ge chains introduced by As-Ge and As-S bonds. These findings allow the use of precise control of the As concentration in OTS materials for improved-performance high-density 3D PCM applications.