Abstract
Amorphous chalcogenide alloys exhibiting crystallization-free Ovonic threshold switching behaviour have gained immense attention as selector materials. While the switching characteristics depend on the chalcogen species, understanding device-level elemental behaviour, particularly for tellurium (Te), remains challenging due to its low crystallization temperature and poor glass-forming ability. Here, we realize an electrothermally induced amorphous Te (a-Te) phase via on-device cryogenic quenching, which rapidly suppresses crystallization in the supercooled liquid at low ambient temperature. The order-to-disorder transition yields a ~ 0.81 V increase in threshold voltage and a ~ 10³ reduction in subthreshold current, attributed to enhanced deep-level trap formation. The a-Te phase exhibits reliable self-regulated oscillations, driven by deep traps, distinguishing it from conventional capacitance-driven effects. These findings support that the threshold switching in Te originates from defect-mediated transitions occurring before melting, rather than solely from thermal phase-change effects. Our results provide insights into chalcogenide switching mechanisms and pave the way for stoichiometry-tuned selector devices, nano-oscillators, and selector-only memory applications.
Similar content being viewed by others
Data availability
Data supporting the findings of this study are available in the main text and Supplementary Information. Source data are provided with this paper.
References
Ovshinsky, S. R. Reversible electrical switching phenomena in disordered structures. Phys. Rev. Lett. 21, 1450–1453 (1968).
Zhu, M., Ren, K. & Song, Z. Ovonic threshold switching selectors for three-dimensional stackable phase-change memory. MRS Bull. 44, 715–720 (2019).
Zhao, Z. et al. Chalcogenide ovonic threshold switching selector. Nano Micro Lett. 16, 81 (2024).
Wen, T. H. et al. Fusion of memristor and digital compute-in-memory processing for energy-efficient edge computing. Science 384, 325–332 (2024).
Ielmini, D. & Wong, H. S. P. In-memory computing with resistive switching devices. Nat. Electron. 1, 333–343 (2018).
Wang, L. et al. Performance improvement of GeTex-based ovonic threshold switching selector by C doping. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 42, 688–691 (2021).
Ban, S. et al. Effect of silicon doping in B-Te (B4Te6) binary ovonic threshold switch system. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 43, 643–646 (2022).
Wu, R. et al. The role of arsenic in the operation of sulfur-based electrical threshold switches. Nat. Commun. 14, 6095 (2023).
Adinolfi, V. et al. ALD heterojunction ovonic threshold switches. ACS Appl. Electron. Mater. 2, 3818–3824 (2020).
Zhang, S. et al. A symmetric multilayer GeSe/GeSeSbTe ovonic threshold switching selector with improved endurance and stability. In 2021 IEEE International Conference on Integrated Circuits, Technologies and Applications (ICTA) 2, 45–46 (IEEE, 2021).
Lee, J. et al. Enhanced switching characteristics of an ovonic threshold switching device with an ultra-thin MgO interfacial layer. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 43, 220–223 (2022).
Lee, J. et al. Understanding switching mechanism of selector-only memory using Se-based ovonic threshold switch device. IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 71, 3351–3357 (2024).
Ravsher, T. et al. Polarity-induced threshold voltage shift in ovonic threshold switching chalcogenides and the impact of material composition. Phys. Status Solidi Rapid Res. Lett. 17, 2200417 (2023).
Fu, Y. et al. A 2.22 Mb/s true random number generator based on a GeTex ovonic threshold switching memristor. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 44, 853–856 (2023).
Jeon, J. W. et al. Vertically stackable ovonic threshold switch oscillator using atomic layer deposited Ge0.6Se0.4 film for high-density artificial neural networks. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces 16, 15032–15042 (2024).
Qiu, G. et al. The resurrection of tellurium as an elemental two-dimensional semiconductor. npj 2D Mater. Appl. 6, 17 (2022).
Reed, E. J. Two-dimensional tellurium. Nature 552, 1–2 (2017).
Zhao, C. et al. Tellurium single-crystal arrays by low-temperature evaporation and crystallization. Adv. Mater. 33, 2100860 (2021).
Kim, T. et al. Growth of high-quality semiconducting tellurium films for high-performance p-channel field-effect transistors with wafer-scale uniformity. npj 2D Mater. Appl. 6, 4 (2022).
Shen, J. et al. Elemental electrical switch enabling phase segregation–free operation. Science 374, 1390–1394 (2021).
Kim, C. et al. Atomic layer deposition route to scalable, electronic-grade van der Waals Te thin films. ACS Nano 17, 15776–15786 (2023).
Qin, J. K. et al. Raman response and transport properties of tellurium atomic chains encapsulated in nanotubes. Nat. Electron. 3, 141–147 (2020).
Wang, Y. et al. Field-effect transistors made from solution-grown two-dimensional tellurene. Nat. Electron. 1, 228–236 (2018).
Sun, Y. et al. Thickness-dependent bandgap and atomic structure in elemental tellurium films. Phys. Status Solidi Rapid Res. Lett. 18, 2300414 (2024).
Zhao, C. et al. Evaporated tellurium thin films for p-type field-effect transistors and circuits. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 53–58 (2020).
Zhou, G. et al. High-mobility helical tellurium field-effect transistors enabled by transfer-free, low-temperature direct growth. Adv. Mater. 30, 1803109 (2018).
Sun, Y. et al. Nanosecond phase-transition dynamics in elemental tellurium. Adv. Funct. Mater. 35, 2408725 (2024).
Brodsky, M. H., Gambino, R. J., Smith, J. E. & Yacoby, Y. The Raman spectrum of amorphous tellurium. Phys. Status Solidi 52, 609–614 (1972).
Yannopoulos, S. N. Structure and photo-induced effects in elemental chalcogens: a review on Raman scattering. J. Mater. Sci. Mater. Electron 31, 7565–7595 (2020).
Cheng, Y. H., Teitelbaum, S. W., Gao, F. Y. & Nelson, K. A. Femtosecond laser amorphization of tellurium. Phys. Rev. B 98, 134112 (2018).
Ikemoto, H. & Miyanaga, T. Local structure of amorphous tellurium studied by EXAFS. J. Synchrotron Rad. 21, 409–412 (2014).
Joannopoulos, J. D., Schlüter, M. & Cohen, M. L. Electronic structure of trigonal and amorphous Se and Te. Phys. Rev. B 11, 2186 (1975).
Akola, J. & Jones, R. O. Structure and dynamics in amorphous tellurium and Te n clusters: a density functional study. Phys. Rev. B Condens. Matter Mater. Phys. 85, 134103 (2012).
Qiao, C. et al. Structure, bonding nature and transition dynamics of amorphous Te. Scr. Mater. 202, 114011 (2021).
Lee, T. H. & Elliott, S. R. Hypervalency in amorphous chalcogenides. Nat. Commun. 13, 1458 (2022).
Wong, H.-S. P. et al. Phase change memory. Proc. IEEE 98, 2201–2227 (2010).
Yang, W., Hur, N., Lim, D. H., Jeong, H. & Suh, J. Heterogeneously structured phase-change materials and memory. J. Appl. Phys. 129, 050903 (2021).
Koo, Y. & Hwang, H. Zn1−xTex ovonic threshold switching device performance and its correlation to material parameters. Sci. Rep. 8, 11822 (2018).
Kastner, M., Adler, D. & Fritzsche, H. Valence-alternation model for localized gap states in lone-pair semiconductors. Phys. Rev. Lett. 37, 1504–1507 (1976).
Okuyama, K. & Kumagai, Y. Study of crystallization in amorphous tellurium films using resistivity measurements. Thin Solid Films 156, 345–350 (1988).
Sung, H.-J. et al. Microscopic origin of polarity-dependent VTH shift in amorphous chalcogenides for 3D self-selecting memory. Adv. Sci. 11, 2408028 (2024).
Fantini, P. et al. VT window model of the Single-chalcogenide Xpoint Memory (SXM). In 2024 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting. 1–4 (IEEE, 2024).
Yoo, J. et al. Threshold voltage drift in Te-based ovonic threshold switch devices under various operation conditions. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 41, 191–194 (2019).
Kabuyanagi, S. et al. Understanding of tunable selector performance in Si-Ge-As-Se OTS devices by extended percolation cluster model considering operation scheme and material design. In 2020 IEEE Symposium on VLSI Technology 1–2 (IEEE, 2020).
Ravsher, T. et al. Comprehensive performance and reliability assessment of se-based selector-only memory. In 2024 IEEE International Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS) 7A.5-1–7A.5-9 (IEEE, 2024).
Ielmini, D. & Zhang, Y. Evidence for trap-limited transport in the subthreshold conduction regime of chalcogenide glasses. Appl. Phys. Lett. 90, 192102 (2007).
Koo, Y., Lee, S., Park, S., Yang, M. & Hwang, H. Simple binary ovonic threshold switching material SiTe and its excellent selector performance for high-density memory array application. IEEE Electron Device Lett. 38, 568–571 (2017).
Ishiguro, T. & Tanaka, T. Non-ohmic and oscillatory behaviours at strong electric field in tellurium. Jpn. J. Appl. Phys. 6, 864–874 (1967).
Ray, A. K., Swan, R. & Hogarth, C. A. Conduction mechanisms in amorphous tellurium films. J. Non Cryst. Solids 168, 150–156 (1994).
Kolobov, A. V. On the origin of p-type conductivity in amorphous chalcogenides. J. Non Cryst. Solids 198, 728–731 (1996).
Lee, J. et al. An artificial tactile neuron enabling spiking representation of stiffness and disease diagnosis. Adv. Mater. 34, 2201608 (2022).
Wang, H. et al. Indium turns tellurium into an ovonic threshold switching selector via a stabilizing amorphous network. J. Mater. Chem. C. 12, 10118–10126 (2024).
Tauc, J. Optical properties and electronic structure of amorphous Ge and Si. Mat. Res. Bull. 3, 37–46 (1968).
Kresse, G. & Hafner, J. Ab initio molecular dynamics for liquid metals. Phys. Rev. B 47, 558–561 (1993).
Perdew, J. P., Burke, K. & Ernzerhof, M. Generalized gradient approximation made simple. Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 3865 (1996).
Blöchl, P. E. Projector augmented-wave method. Phys. Rev. B 50, 17953 (1994).
Heyd, J., Scuseria, G. E. & Ernzerhof, M. Hybrid functionals based on a screened Coulomb potential. J. Chem. Phys. 118, 8207–8215 (2003).
Mostofi, A. A. et al. An updated version of wannier90: a tool for obtaining maximally-localized Wannier functions. Comput. Phys. Commun. 185, 2309–2310 (2014).
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the National R&D Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by Ministry of Science and ICT (RS-2024-00336695, RS-2025-12602968, and RS-2025-23323754). This research was also partially supported by the National Supercomputing Center with supercomputing resources including technical support (KSC-2024-CRE-0583) for T.H.L. J.S. acknowledges support by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (IO251216-14657-01).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
J.S. and N.H. conceived the idea and designed the experiment. N.H. performed most of the experiments, including material deposition, analysis, optimized device fabrication, electrical measurement, and TEM characterization. S.K. mainly supported this work, including sputtering and electrical measurement. T.H.L. and Y.B.P. constructed and characterized AIMD simulations. C.K. grew ALD-Te thin films and supported KPFM analysis. S.Y. supported cryogenic measurement. Y.C. supported device fabrication. J.S. and N.H. wrote the manuscript. All authors discussed the results and commented on the paper.
Corresponding authors
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing interests.
Peer review
Peer review information
Nature Communications thanks Min Zhu and the other anonymous reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work. A peer review file is available.
Additional information
Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Supplementary information
Source data
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Hur, N., Kim, S., Park, Y.B. et al. On-device cryogenic quenching enables robust amorphous tellurium for threshold switching. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68223-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-68223-0
