Issue 24, 2016

Crystallization kinetics of the phase change material GeSb6Te measured with dynamic transmission electron microscopy

Abstract

GeSb6Te is a chalcogenide-based phase change material that has shown great ptoential for use in solid-state memory devices. The crystallization kinetics of amorphous thin films of GeSb6Te during laser crystallization were followed with dynamic transmission electron microscopy, a photo-emission electron microscopy technique with nanosecond-scale time resolution. Nine-frame movies of crystal growth were taken during laser crystallization. The nucleation rate is observed to be very low and the growth rates are very high, up to 10.8 m sāˆ’1 for amorphous as-deposited films and significantly higher for an amorphous film subject to sub-threshold laser annealing before crystallization. The measured growth rates exceed any directly measured growth rate of a phase change material. The crystallization is reminiscent of explosive crystallization of elemental semiconductors both in the magnitude of the growth rate and in the resulting crystalline microstructures.

Graphical abstract: Crystallization kinetics of the phase change material GeSb6Te measured with dynamic transmission electron microscopy

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
21 Jan 2016
Accepted
24 Mac 2016
First published
30 Mac 2016

Dalton Trans., 2016,45, 9988-9995

Crystallization kinetics of the phase change material GeSb6Te measured with dynamic transmission electron microscopy

M. M. Winseck, H.-Y. Cheng, G. H. Campbell and M. K. Santala, Dalton Trans., 2016, 45, 9988 DOI: 10.1039/C6DT00298F

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