US Patent Issued to International Business Machines on March 18 for "PCM cell with nanoheater surrounded with airgaps" (New York, Washington Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., March 19 -- United States Patent no. 12,256,653, issued on March 18, was assigned to International Business Machines Corp. (Armonk, N.Y.).

"PCM cell with nanoheater surrounded with airgaps" was invented by Juntao Li (Cohoes, N.Y.), Kangguo Cheng (Schenectady, N.Y.), Dexin Kong (Redmond, Wash.) and Ruilong Xie (Niskayuna, N.Y.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "A phase change memory (PCM) device is provided. The PCM device includes a bottom electrode formed on a substrate, a heater electrode formed on the bottom electrode, the heater electrode having a tapered portion that becomes narrower in a direction away from the substrate. The PCM device also includes an interlayer dielectri...