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

Winseck, M. M.; Cheng, H. -Y.; Campbell, G. H.; Santala, Melissa K.

doi:10.1039/C6DT00298F

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

Journal Article · Wed Mar 30 00:00:00 EDT 2016 · Dalton Transactions

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1039/C6DT00298F· OSTI ID:1367973

Winseck, M. M. ^[1]; Cheng, H. -Y. ^[2]; Campbell, G. H. ^[3]; Santala, Melissa K. ^[1]

Oregon State Univ., Corvallis, OR (United States)
Macronix International Co., Ltd., Hsinchu (Taiwan)
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

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 s^–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. Here, the crystallization is reminiscent of explosive crystallization of elemental semiconductors both in the magnitude of the growth rate and in the resulting crystalline microstructures.

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Research Organization:: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: AC52-07NA27344

OSTI ID:: 1367973

Report Number(s):: LLNL-JRNL-681060; ICHBD9

Journal Information:: Dalton Transactions, Vol. 45, Issue 24; ISSN 1477-9226

Publisher:: Royal Society of ChemistryCopyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 12 works

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High-Speed Electron Microscopy Campbell, Geoffrey H.; McKeown, Joseph T.; Santala, Melissa K. Springer Handbook of Microscopy https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00069-1_8	book	January 2019
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In situ dynamic transmission electron microscopy characterization of liquid-mediated crystallization of amorphous Ge Egan, G.; Rahn, T. T.; Rise, A. J. Journal of Applied Physics, Vol. 126, Issue 10 https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5117845	journal	September 2019
Crystallization of supercooled liquid antimony: A density functional study Ropo, M.; Akola, J.; Jones, R. O. Physical Review B, Vol. 96, Issue 18 https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevb.96.184102	journal	November 2017

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