Growth study of GexSbyTez deposited by MOCVD under nitrogen for non-volatile memory applications

We report on the bubbler-type MOCVD growth of GexSbyTez (GST) on SiO2/Si substrates, potentially transferable to phase change memory (PCM) devices. Pure nitrogen was used as the process gas in order to reduce toxicity whilst increasing the simplicity of the process. This systematic study allowed the modification of the growth parameters on SiO2 to move through initial sub-micrometric crystalline grain deposition on to lateral island growth. Temperature was observed to play a critical role in film quality with strong morphology and island shape/size changes for small thermal variations. Eventually, continuous layers of GST in the hcp phase and composition close to the 2:2:5 were studied. The deposition on different substrates was also investigated. Although crystal nucleation is still far from achieving the target step coverage required for uniform coating of patterned substrates, the electrical sheet resistance of GST films exhibited values corresponding to those expected for chalcogenide materials suitable to be integrated into PCM devices.