Multilayer SnSb4–SbSe Thin Films for Phase Change Materials

Jul 24, 2017 - ... Possessing Ultrafast Phase Change Speed and Enhanced Stability ... 122.0 °C and the phase change speed reaches 5 ns in the device ...
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Multilayer SnSb4-SbSe thin films for phase change materials of ultrafast phase change speed and enhanced stability Ruirui Liu, Xiao Zhou, JiWei Zhai, Jun Song, Pengzhi Wu, Tianshu Lai, Sannian Song, and Zhitang Song ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Just Accepted Manuscript • DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b06533 • Publication Date (Web): 24 Jul 2017 Downloaded from http://pubs.acs.org on July 26, 2017

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ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces

Multilayer SnSb4-SbSe Thin Films for Phase Change Materials of Ultrafast Phase Change Speed and Enhanced Stability Ruirui Liu,a,b Xiao Zhou,b Jiwei Zhai,a,∗ Jun Song,b∗ Pengzhi Wu,c Tianshu Lai,c∗ Sannian Song,d Zhitang Songd a

Shanghai Key Laboratory for R&D and Application of Metallic Functional Materials, School of Materials Science & Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai 201804, China b Department of Mining and Materials Engineering, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec H3A 0C5, Canada c State Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Materials and Technology, Department of Physics, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou 510275, China d State Key Laboratory of Functional Materials for Informatics, Shanghai Institute of Micro-system and Inf ormation Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China

ABSTRACT: The multilayer thin film, comprising of two different phase change material (PCM) components alternatively deposited, provides an effective means to tune and leverage good properties of its components, promising a new route towards high-performance PCMs. The present study systematically investigated the SnSb4-SbSe multilayer thin film as a potential PCM, combining experiments and first-principles calculations, and demonstrated that these multilayer thin films exhibit good electrical resistivity, robust thermal stability and superior phase change speed. In particular, the potential operating temperature for ten years is shown to be 122.0 ºC and the phase change speed reaches 5 ns in device test. The good thermal stability of the multilayer thin film is shown to come from the formation of the Sb2Se3 phase, while the fast phase change speed can be attributed to the formation of vacancies and a SbSe metastable phase. It is also demonstrated that the SbSe metastable phase contributes to further enhancing the electrical resistivity of the crystalline state and the thermal stability of the amorphous state, being vital to determining the properties of the multilayer SnSb4-SbSe thin film. ∗

Corresponding authors. E-mail address: [email protected] (Jiwei Zhai); [email protected] (Jun Song); [email protected] (Tianshu Lai)

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Keywords: Phase change material, metastable phase, fast phase change speed, thermal stability, electrical resistivity 1. INTRODUCTION Phase-change materials (PCMs) are characterized by their ability to undergo rapid reversible transition between amorphous (disordered) and (meta)-stable crystalline (order) states that are of distinct optical and electrical properties, when subjected to a pulse electrical field

1-3

. Upon a small magnitude and long duration pulse, the

amorphous region within a PCM is locally annealed and crystallized (SET operation), while a larger magnitude and smaller duration pulse will quickly heat, the material above its melting temperature, followed by rapid cooling to yield a disordered amorphous mark (RESET operation) 4. PCMs are suitable for being used as optical memory in DVD re-writable optical discs and in phase change non-volatile random access memories (PCRAMs) 5-6. Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST) is a prototypical PCM that exhibits low energy consumption (