Ovonyx Inc.

Intel Corporation

Tyler A Lowery

Daniel Xu

A memory cell including a phase-change material may have reduced leakage current. The cell may receive signals through a buried wordline in one embodiment. The buried wordline may include a sandwich of a more lightly doped N type region over a more heavily doped N type region over a less heavily doped N type region. As a result of the configuration of the N type regions forming the buried wordline, the leakage current of the buried wordline to the substrate under reverse bias conditions may be significantly reduced.

Reducing leakage currents in memories with phase-change material

A cell in a structural phase-change memory is programmed by raising cell voltage and cell current to programming threshold levels, and then lowering these to quiescent levels below their programming levels. A precharge pulse is then applied which raises the bitline voltage of the selected cell and does not raise the cell voltage and cell current to their programming levels. Then, the cell current is raised to a read level which is below the programming threshold level, and the bitline voltage is compared to a reference voltage while the cell current is at the read level.

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Tyler A Lowery