Oxygen Tuned Local Structure and Phase-Change Performance of Germanium Telluride

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• 作者：Xilin Zhou ; Yonghua Du ; Jitendra K. Behera ; Liangcai Wu ; Zhitang Song ; Robert E. Simpson
• 刊名：ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces
• 出版年：2016
• 出版时间：August 10, 2016
• 年：2016
• 卷：8
• 期：31
• 页码：20185-20191
• 全文大小：491K
• 年卷期：0
• ISSN：1944-8252

文摘

The effect of oxygen on the local structure of Ge atoms in GeTe-O materials has been investigated. Oxygen leads to a significant modification to the vibrational modes of Ge octahedra, which results from a decrease in its coordination. We find that a defective octahedral Ge network is the crucial fingerprint for rapid and reversible structural transitions in GeTe-based phase change materials. The appearance of oxide Raman modes confirms phase separation into GeO and TeO at high level O doping. Counterintuitively, despite the increase in crystallization temperature of oxygen doped GeTe-O phase change materials, when GeTe-O materials are used in electrical phase change memory cells, the electrical switching energy is lower than the pure GeTe material. This switching energy reduction is ascribed to the smaller change in volume, and therefore smaller enthalpy change, for the oxygen doped GeTe materials.