Authors: Yonghui Zheng Mengjiao Xia Yan Cheng Feng Rao Keyuan Ding Weili Liu Yu Jia Zhitang Song Songlin Feng
Publish Date: 2016/08/31
Volume: 9, Issue: 11, Pages: 3453-3462
Abstract
Although phase change memory technology has developed drastically in the past two decades the cognition of the key switching materials still ignores an important member the facecentered cubic Sb2Te3 Apart from the wellknown equilibrium hexagonal Sb2Te3 crystal we prove the metastable facecentered cubic Sb2Te3 phase does exist Such a metastable crystal contains a large concentration of vacancies randomly occupying the cationic lattice sites The facecentered cubic to hexagonal phase transformation of Sb2Te3 accompanied by vacancy aggregation occurs at a quite lower temperature compared to that of Ge2Sb2Te5 alloy We prove that the covalentlike bonds prevail in the metastable Sb2Te3 crystal deviating from the ideal resonant features If a proper doping technique is adopted the metastable Sb2Te3 phase could be promising for realizing reversibly swift and lowenergy phase change memory applications Our study may offer a new insight into commercialized Ge–Sb–Te systems and help in the design of novel phase change materials to boost the performances of the phase change memory device
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