We found a match
Your institution may have rights to this item. Sign in to continue.
- Title
Theoretical potential for low energy consumption phase change memory utilizing electrostatically-induced structural phase transitions in 2D materials.
- Authors
Rehn, Daniel A.; Li, Yao; Pop, Eric; Reed, Evan J.
- Abstract
Structural phase-change materials are of great importance for applications in information storage devices. Thermally driven structural phase transitions are employed in phase-change memory to achieve lower programming voltages and potentially lower energy consumption than mainstream nonvolatile memory technologies. However, the waste heat generated by such thermal mechanisms is often not optimized, and could present a limiting factor to widespread use. The potential for electrostatically driven structural phase transitions has recently been predicted and subsequently reported in some two-dimensional materials, providing an athermal mechanism to dynamically control properties of these materials in a nonvolatile fashion while achieving potentially lower energy consumption. In this work, we employ DFT-based calculations to make theoretical comparisons of the energy required to drive electrostatically-induced and thermally-induced phase transitions. Determining theoretical limits in monolayer MoTe2 and thin films of Ge2Sb2Te5, we find that the energy consumption per unit volume of the electrostatically driven phase transition in monolayer MoTe2 at room temperature is 9% of the adiabatic lower limit of the thermally driven phase transition in Ge2Sb2Te5. Furthermore, experimentally reported phase change energy consumption of Ge2Sb2Te5 is 100–10,000 times larger than the adiabatic lower limit due to waste heat flow out of the material, leaving the possibility for energy consumption in monolayer MoTe2-based devices to be orders of magnitude smaller than Ge2Sb2Te5-based devices. Phase change materials: less is more Theoretical calculations reveal that the electrostatically driven phase transition of monolayer MoTe2 is accompanied by little heat waste. Phase change materials have enormous potential for thermal and information storage applications, as they can switch between different phases (and properties) with external stimuli. The amount of heat dissipated during these transitions can however limit the operation and further miniaturization of devices. A team from Stanford University has now modeled heat dissipation during the phase transition in electrostatically driven MoTe2 and thermally driven Ge2Sb2Te5: MoTe2 could consume 100‐10,000 times less energy per unit volume than Ge2Sb2Te5, as in the latter case most of the energy becomes heat waste. The small amount of heat that enters and leaves the system in the case of MoTe2 makes it very promising for low‐energy and low‐dimension devices.
- Publication
NPJ Computational Materials, 2018, Vol 4, Issue 1, pN.PAG
- ISSN
2057-3960
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1038/s41524-017-0059-2