Space Qualified Nonvolatile Memory

The purpose of this Phase I SBIR project is to reduce the power and increase the speed of reprogrammable non-volatile chalcogenide devices. The proposed method employs a porous monolayer of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as local heating elements for chalcogenide devices. By exploiting the molecular nature of carbon nanotubes, very large local temperature changes can be induced on timescales much shorter than using traditional thin film resistors. This innovation directly addresses the bottleneck in performance stemming from the relatively long delay associated with the crystallizing transition of Ge2Sb2Te5 layers. Also, due to the increased heating efficiency of CNT fabrics, a lower total overall power is required to effect each state transition. The proposed Phase I project focuses on electrical and thermal measurements of patterned CNT fabrics and patterned CNT/Ge2Sb2Te5 bi-layers. Completion of a successful Phase I program will allow CNT/Ge2Sb2Te5 test devices to be designed in Phase II and incorporated into BAE's current CRAM technology, increasing the speed and decreasing the power of the integrated chalcogenide devices, which forms a critical component in the effort to exploit higher performance, reprogrammable, reliable and "agile" radiation tolerant non-volatile memory systems for space.