This book introduces a novel Ti-Sb-Te alloy for high-speed and low-power phase-change memory applications, which demonstrates a phase-change mechanism that differs significantly from that of conventional Ge2Sb2Te5 and yields favorable overall performance. Systematic methods, combined with better material characteristics, are used to optimize the material components and device performance. Subsequently, a phase-change memory chip based on the optimized component is successfully fabricated using 40-nm complementary metal-oxide semiconductor technology, which offers a number of advantages in many embedded applications.

A state-of-the-art description of metastability observed in chalcogenide alloys is presented with the accent on the underlying physics. A comparison is made between sulphur(selenium)-based chalcogenide glasses, where numerous photo-induced phenomena take place entirely within the amorphous phase, and tellurides where a reversible crystal-to-amorphous phase-change transformation is a major effect. Applications of metastability in devices¿optical memories and nonvolatile electronic phase-change random-access memories among others are discussed, including the latest trends. Background material essential for understanding current research in the field is also provided.

Offering thorough coverage of atomic layer deposition (ALD), this book moves from basic chemistry of ALD and modeling of processes to examine ALD in memory, logic devices and machines. Reviews history, operating principles and ALD processes for each device.

For a number of years it has been a General Motors Research Laboratories custom to hold a symposium on a subject which is new and emerging, and to invite the best people in the world in that subject to come together to talk to each other. Initially, I had some difficulty in regarding foundry processes as a new and emerging subject. Copper alloys have been in foundry practice for about six thousand years. Foundrymen working with those alloys have been recognized, as such, for nearly all that time. Iron has a much shorter history, probably only three or four thousand years. So what's new? What is new is that a subject which has always been so complex and so difficult that it could only be a craft skill, with bits and pieces of knowledge and bits and pieces of insight, has begun to yield to new abilities to solve very complex problems. We do this now because we can handle great amounts of data by computational means, using new and more complicated theoretical treatments than we could deal with before. In fact, we have a new technology with which we can attack these terribly difficult problems. Thus, foundry processing is becoming a new subject because new things can be done with it.

This book summarises the significant progress made in organic thermoelectric materials, focusing on effective routes to minimize thermal conductivity and maximize power factor.

This is an overview of recording principles, materials aspects, and applications of rewritable optical storage. Elements of data recording, including mark formation, eraseability, direct overwrite strategies, data quality and data stability are explained and extensively discussed. Throughout the book, a mark formation model is described and used to back-up measurement results and support the discussed applications. High-speed and dual-layer recording are analyzed in depth, with proposals to achieve higher performance.