Photodoping of chalcogenide glass (ChG) is an important process that has been used in several technology applications such as submicron lithography, diffraction gratings, and holographic recording. Today, one of the primary uses of photodoping is in the production of nonvolatile cation-based resistive random access memory (RRAM). Cation RRAM operates through electronic control of metal concentration within a ChG film, which alters the material between high resistance (HRS) and low resistance states (LRS). The process of photodoping is performed after the fabrication of ChG-based RRAM in order to introduce active metal into the film and lower switching energy. In spite of recent advances in the control of photodoping in ChG materials during manufacturing, the physical principles governing the dynamics of the process are still not fully understood. In this paper, we present a physical-based simulation for photodoping in ChG materials used in the lateral programmable metallization cells. The analysis structure is a lateral device that uses GeSe binary film as the ChG material with electrically active Ag anode and neutral Ni cathode contacts. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.