Thermoelectric heating of Ge2Sb2Te5 in phase change memory devices

We report on the demonstration of the active thermoelectric application to nanometer-scaled semiconductor devices. The thermoelectric heating already exists during programming in conventional phase change memory (PRAM) cells, which is only a minor supplement to Joule heating. Here, by rigorously designing devices, we have demonstrated an unprecedentedly high efficiency of PRAM, where the majority of the heat is supplied by the thermoelectric effect.