Intel Corporation

Mini Goel

Hemant P Rao

Rouhollah Mousavi Iraei

Raymond W Zeng

Kiran Pangal

Saad Monasa

A memory device comprising a plurality of memory cells, a memory cell of the plurality of memory cells comprising a phase change material (PM) region and a select device (SD) region in series with the PM region; a first address line and a second address line coupled to the memory cell; and memory controller circuitry to interface with the first address line and the second address line, the memory controller circuitry to encode a state in the memory cell by applying, through the first address line and second address line, a current spike and a programming pulse to the memory cell to cause the PM region to be placed into an amorphous state and the SD region of the memory cell to be placed into a high threshold voltage state.

Spike based programming of a memory cell to reset state

A state may be encoded into a memory cell comprising a phase change material (PM) region and a select device (SD) region by: applying a first current in the memory cell over a first time period, wherein the first current applied over the first time period causes the PM region of the memory cell to be placed into an amorphous state and the SD region of the memory cell to be placed into an amorphous state; and applying a second current in the memory cell over a second time period after the first time period, wherein the second current applied over the third time period causes the SD region of the memory cell to be placed into a crystalline state and the PM region of the memory cell to remain in the amorphous state.

Encoding additional states in a three-dimensional crosspoint memory architecture

In one embodiment, a state is reach from a memory cell comprising a phase change material (PM) region and a select device (SD) region by: ramping a voltage applied to a first address line of an address line pair corresponding to the memory cell until the first address line voltage is stabilized at a predetermined voltage, ramping a voltage applied to a second address line of the address line pair corresponding to the memory cell, detecting a snap in the memory cell while ramping the voltage applied to the second address line, and determining a state of the memory cell based on a differential voltage between the first and second address lines when the memory cell snap occurred.

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Milpitas, CA, United States of America

Mini Goel