Search

We have investigated the structural, vibrational, and electronic properties of the amorphous phase of InSb and In3SbTe2 compounds of interest for applications in phase change non-volatile memories. Models of the amorphous phase have been generated by quenching from the melt by molecular dynamics simulations based on density functional theory. In particular, we have studied the dependence of the structural properties on the choice of the exchange-correlation functional. It turns out that the use of the Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr functional provides models with a much larger fraction of In atoms in a tetrahedral bonding geometry with respect to previous results obtained with the most commonly used Perdew-Becke-Ernzerhof functional. This outcome is at odd with the properties of Ge2Sb2Te5 phase change compound for which the two exchange-correlation functionals yield very similar results on the structure of the amorphous phase.

We have investigated the structural, vibrational, and electronic properties of the amorphous phase of InSb and In3SbTe2 compounds of interest for applications in phase change non-volatile memories. Models of the amorphous phase have been generated by quenching from the melt by molecular dynamics simulations based on density functional theory. In particular, we have studied the dependence of the structural properties on the choice of the exchange-correlation functional. It turns out that the use of the Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr functional provides models with a much larger fraction of In atoms in a tetrahedral bonding geometry with respect to previous results obtained with the most commonly used Perdew-Becke-Ernzerhof functional. This outcome is at odd with the properties of Ge2Sb2Te5 phase change compound for which the two exchange-correlation functionals yield very similar results on the structure of the amorphous phase.

Aging is a common feature of the glassy state. In the case of phase-change chalcogenide alloys the aging of the amorphous state is responsible for an increase of the electrical resistance with time. This phenomenon called drift is detrimental in the application of these materials in phase-change nonvolatile memories, which are emerging as promising candidates for storage class memories. By means of combined molecular dynamics and electronic structure calculations based on density functional theory, we have unraveled the atomistic origin of the resistance drift in the prototypical phase-change compound GeTe. The drift results from a widening of the band gap and a reduction of Urbach tails due to structural relaxations leading to the removal of chains of Ge-Ge homopolar bonds. The same structural features are actually responsible for the high mobility above the glass transition which boosts the crystallization speed exploited in the device.

Models of the amorphous phase of Ge2Sb2Te5 have been generated by density functional molecular dynamics simulations with the Becke-Lee-Yang-Parr (BLYP) exchange-correlation functional. Four independent 459-atom models have been used to improve the statistical analysis of the structural properties with respect to previous work by Kim et al. [J. Appl. Phys. 113, 134302 (2013)]. Structural, electronic, and vibrational properties of the BLYP models turn out to be very similar to those generated previously with the Perdew-Burke-Ernzerhof (PBE) functional mostly used in the simulations of phase change compounds. Only a very marginal increase in the fraction of tetrahedra is observed in the BLYP models.

Phase change materials are of great interest as active layers in rewritable optical disks and novel electronic nonvolatile memories. These applications rest on a fast and reversible transformation between the amorphous and crystalline phases upon heating, taking place on the nanosecond time scale. In this work, we investigate the microscopic origin of the fast crystallization process by means of large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of the phase change compound GeTe. To this end, we use an interatomic potential generated from a Neural Network fitting of a large database of ab initio energies. We demonstrate that in the temperature range of the programming protocols of the electronic memories (500−700 K), nucleation of the crystal in the supercooled liquid is not rate-limiting. In this temperature range, the growth of supercritical nuclei is very fast because of a large atomic mobility, which is, in turn, the consequence of the high fragility of the supercooled liquid and the associated breakdown of the Stokes−Einstein relation between viscosity and diffusivity

We investigated the structural transformations of the hexagonal phase of Ge2Sb2Te5 under pressure by means of ab initio molecular dynamics with a variable simulation cell. To overcome the enthalpy barriers between the different phases we used metadynamics techniques. We reproduced the hexagonal-to-bcc transformation under pressure found experimentally. The bcc phase retains a partial chemical order, as opposed to a second bcc phase we generated by pressuring the amorphous phase. This structural difference is suggested to be responsible for the memory effect uncovered experimentally, the bcc phase reverting to the amorphous or to the hexagonal phase upon decompression, depending on the type of precursor phase it originates from.