Can silver in chalcogenide glasses change our vision of microelectronics?

Ag photodiffused in thin films of Ge-Se glasses forms a nano phase-separated material that acts as a solid electrolyte. Forming electrodes in contact with a layer of such an ion conductor, an anode which has oxidizable Ag and an inert cathode, creates a device that has an intrinsically high resistance but which can be rapidly switched to a non-volatile low resistance state at low bias via electrodeposition of Ag. A reverse bias will cause dispersion of the electrodeposited conducting pathway, returning the device to a high resistance state and this write-erase cycle may be repeated many tens of millions of times per second. This is the basis of the Programmable Metallization Cell memory (PMCm) technology. Low voltage/low power, high speed operation and widely separated resistance states, coupled with the possibility for nanoscale device dimensions make this an ideal high density memory technology. Device performance is discussed in terms of material characteristics as determined by RBS analysis, Raman spectroscopy and XRD studies.