Nano-timescale Phase Change
Recently, much research has focused on the material analysis of the phase change material in an attempt to explain the high speed phase change of GeSbTe. Using EXAFS, it was found that the most matching model for crystalline GeSbTe is a distorted rocksalt lattice and for amorphous a tetrahedral structure. The small change in configuration from distorted rocksalt to tetrahedral suggests that nano-timescale phase change is possible as the major covalent bonds are intact and only the weaker bonds are broken.
Using the most possible crystalline and amorphous local structures for GeSbTe, the fact that density of crystalline GeSbTe is less than 10% larger than amorphous GeSbTe, and the fact that free energies of both amorphous and crystalline GeSbTe have to be around the same magnitude, it was hypothesized from density functional theory simulations that the most stable amorphous state was the spinel structure, where Ge occupies tetrahedral positions and Sb and Te occupy octahedral positions, as the ground state energy was the lowest of all the possible configurations. By means of Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics simulations this conjecture have been theoretically confirmed.
Read more about this topic: GeSbTe
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