Amorphous phase-change memory alloy with no resistance drift

Xiaozhe Wang; Ruobing Wang; Suyang Sun; Ding Xu; Chao Nie; Zhou Zhou; Chenyu Wen; Junying Zhang; Ruixuan Chu; Xueyang Shen; Wen Zhou; Zhitang Song; Jiang-Jing Wang; En Ma; Wei Zhang

arXiv · 2503.21446

Amorphous phase-change memory alloy with no resistance drift

Xiaozhe Wang·Ruobing Wang·Suyang Sun·Ding Xu·Chao Nie·Zhou Zhou·Chenyu Wen·Junying Zhang·Ruixuan Chu·Xueyang Shen·Wen Zhou·Zhitang Song·Jiang-Jing Wang·En Ma·Wei Zhang

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Abstract

Spontaneous structural relaxation is intrinsic to glassy materials due to their metastable nature. For phase-change materials (PCMs), the resultant temporal change in electrical resistance seriously hamper in-memory computing (IMC) applications. Here, we report an ab-initio-calculation-informed design of amorphous PCM composed of robust "molecule-like" motifs with minimal Peierls distortion, depriving the amorphous alloy of structural ingredients that would gradually evolve upon aging to entail resistance drift. We demonstrate amorphous CrTe3 thin films that display practically no resistance drift at any working temperature from -200 to 165 degree C. We achieve multilevel programming of CrTe3 through both step-wise crystallization and step-wise amorphization using a hybrid opto-electronic device at various temperatures. Moreover, the application potential of CrTe3 in neuromorphic computing is testified by its incorporation in a vehicle with automatic path-tracking function. Our work opens a new avenue to achieving IMC-requisite properties via judicious design of the composition and atomic-level structure of disordered PCM alloys.

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Xiaozhe Wang, Ruobing Wang, Suyang Sun, Ding Xu, Chao Nie, Zhou Zhou, Chenyu Wen, Junying Zhang, Ruixuan Chu, Xueyang Shen, Wen Zhou, Zhitang Song, Jiang-Jing Wang, En Ma, Wei Zhang. 2025-09-15. Amorphous phase-change memory alloy with no resistance drift. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.21446

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