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Thermal conduction in GeSbTe films strongly influences the writing energy and time for phase change memory (PCM) technology. This study measures the thermal conductivity of Ge2Sb2Te5 between 25 and 340°C for layers with thicknesses near 60, 120, and 350nm. A strong thickness dependence of the thermal conductivity is attributed to a combination of thermal boundary resistance (TBR) and microstructural imperfections. Stoichiometric variations significantly alter the phase transition temperatures but do not strongly impact the thermal conductivity at a given temperature. This work makes progress on extracting the TBR for Ge2Sb2Te5 films, which is a critical unknown parameter for PCM simulations.

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Although lateral thermal conduction in Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) films can influence the performance of phase change memory (PCM), there are no data available for the in-plane thermal conductivity. This work measures both the in-plane and the out-of-plane thermal conductivities for the amorphous, face-centered-cubic, and hexagonal-close-packed phases of GST using two independent techniques. For crystalline GST, we report anisotropy favoring out-of-plane conduction by up to 54%, which varies with annealing time. Scaling arguments indicate that the anisotropy may be due to the thermal resistance of amorphous regions near grain boundaries. This explanation is consistent with transmission electron microscopy images showing columnar grains and amorphous phase at grain boundaries.

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