Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Nature Research, Scientific Reports, 1(6), 2016

DOI: 10.1038/srep23843

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Metal - Insulator Transition Driven by Vacancy Ordering in GeSbTe Phase Change Materials

This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Red circle
Postprint: archiving forbidden
Green circle
Published version: archiving allowed
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

SeriesInformation ; Scientific reports 6, 23843 (2016). doi:10.1038/srep23843 ; Abstract ; Phase Change Materials (PCMs) are unique compounds employed in non-volatile random access memory thanks to the rapid and reversible transformation between the amorphous and crystalline state that display large differences in electrical and optical properties. In addition to the amorphous-to-crystalline transition, experimental results on polycrystalline GeSbTe alloys (GST) films evidenced a Metal-Insulator Transition (MIT) attributed to disorder in the crystalline phase. Here we report on a fundamental advance in the fabrication of GST with out-of-plane stacking of ordered vacancy layers by means of three distinct methods: Molecular Beam Epitaxy, thermal annealing and application of femtosecond laser pulses. We assess the degree of vacancy ordering and explicitly correlate it with the MIT. We further tune the ordering in a controlled fashion attaining a large range of resistivity. Employing ordered GST might allow the realization of cells with larger programming windows. ; Other ; Published by Nature Publishing Group, London