journal article·2018-07-24

Genesis and Effects of Swapping Bilayers in Hexagonal GeSb2Te4

Jiang-Jing Wang, Jun Wang, Hongchu Du, Lu Lu, Peter C. Schmitz, Johannes Reindl, Antonio M. Mio, Chun-Lin Jia, Evan Ma, Riccardo Mazzarello, Matthias Wuttig, Wei Zhang

Chemistry of Materials· Volume 30· Issue 14
Publisher page

Abstract

Disorder plays an essential role in shaping the transport properties of GeSbTe phase-change materials (PCMs) to enable nonvolatile memory technology. Recently, increasing efforts have been undertaken to investigate disorder in the stable hexagonal phase of GeSbTe compounds, focusing on a special type of swapping bilayer defects. This configuration has been claimed to be the key element for a new mechanism for phase-change memory. Here, we report a direct atomic-scale chemical identification of these swapping bilayer defects in hexagonal GeSb2Te4 together with nanoscale atomic modeling and simulations. We identify the intermixing of Sb and Te in the bilayer to be the essential ingredient for the stability of the defects, and elucidate their abundance as due to the small energy cost. The bilayer defects are demonstrated to be ineffective in altering the electron localization nature that is relevant to transport properties of hexagonal GeSb2Te4. Our work paves the way for future studies of layer-switching dynamics in GeSbTe at the atomic and electronic level, which could be important to understand the new switching mechanism relevant to interfacial phase-change memory.
Source: openalex_inverted_index · Quality: baseline

Research context

OpenAlex topics: Phase-change materials and chalcogenides · Chalcogenide Semiconductor Thin Films · Nonlinear Optical Materials Studies

SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.

Affiliations

Center for Advancing Materials Performance from the Nanoscale, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Peter Grünberg Institute and Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany

The School of Electronic and Information Engineering, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China

Institute for Theoretical Solid-State Physics, JARA-FIT and JARA-HPC, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Institute of Physics IA, JARA-FIT and JARA-HPC, RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, United States

Peter Grünberg Institute (PGI 10), Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, 52425 Jülich, Germany

Funding

Xi?an Jiaotong University · Basic Energy Sciences · Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft · FP7 Ideas: European Research Council · National Natural Science Foundation of China · Science and Technology Department of Jiangsu Province · International Joint Laboratory for Micro/Nano Manufacturing and Measurement Technologies, Xi?an Jiaotong University

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