Thermal conductivity measurement of amorphous dielectric multilayers for phase-change memory power reduction
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 (United States)
- Department of Material Science and Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 (United States)
- School of Energy and Power Engineering, Xi'an Jiatong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049 (China)
- Hewlett-Packard Labs, 1501 Page Mill Rd., Palo Alto, California 94304 (United States)
- Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305 (United States)
In this work, we investigate the temperature-dependent thermal conductivities of few nanometer thick alternating stacks of amorphous dielectrics, specifically SiO{sub 2}/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} and SiO{sub 2}/Si{sub 3}N{sub 4}. Experiments using steady-state Joule-heating and electrical thermometry, while using a micro-miniature refrigerator over a wide temperature range (100–500 K), show that amorphous thin-film multilayer SiO{sub 2}/Si{sub 3}N{sub 4} and SiO{sub 2}/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3} exhibit through-plane room temperature effective thermal conductivities of about 1.14 and 0.48 W/(m × K), respectively. In the case of SiO{sub 2}/Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}, the reduced conductivity is attributed to lowered film density (7.03 → 5.44 × 10{sup 28 }m{sup –3} for SiO{sub 2} and 10.2 → 8.27 × 10{sup 28 }m{sup –3} for Al{sub 2}O{sub 3}) caused by atomic layer deposition of thin-films as well as a small, finite, and repeating thermal boundary resistance (TBR) of 1.5 m{sup 2} K/GW between dielectric layers. Molecular dynamics simulations reveal that vibrational mismatch between amorphous oxide layers is small, and that the TBR between layers is largely due to imperfect interfaces. Finally, the impact of using this multilayer dielectric in a dash-type phase-change memory device is studied using finite-element simulations.
- OSTI ID:
- 22597851
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 120, Issue 1; Other Information: (c) 2016 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-8979
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
GENERAL PHYSICS
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
ALUMINIUM OXIDES
DENSITY
DIELECTRIC MATERIALS
FINITE ELEMENT METHOD
JOULE HEATING
LAYERS
MEMORY DEVICES
MOLECULAR DYNAMICS METHOD
SILICA
SILICON NITRIDES
SILICON OXIDES
SIMULATION
STEADY-STATE CONDITIONS
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0273-0400 K
THERMAL BOUNDARY RESISTANCE
THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY
THIN FILMS