Filamentary Nanoheater-Driven Phase-Change Memory with Reduced Lithography Dependence

High-performance phase-change memory (PCM) scaling is severely constrained by the cost and complexity of advanced lithography. Here, we report a filamentary nanoheater-driven PCM architecture with reduced lithography dependence, fabricated by using conventional micron-scale UV lithography. Self-confined Ag conductive filaments (CFs) spontaneously formed under thermal annealing and electrical stimulation serve as nanoheaters, enabling localized Joule heating and thermal confinement. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) observations reveal a confined phase transition near the filament/phase-change layer interface, while electrothermal simulations confirm the strong thermal localization effect of the filamentary nanoheaters. Meanwhile, carbon-doped SbTe (CST) provides enhanced structural stability, suppressing resistance drift and improving cycling reliability. Benefiting from the synergistic effects of localized thermal excitation and improved material stability, the devices exhibit ultrafast switching within 6 ns, an energy consumption of 6.01 pJ, and endurance exceeding 1.6 × 10⁵ cycles. This work provides a simple and low-cost process scheme for realizing high-performance PCM.