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Archive of Highlights Highlights Vol. 51 No. 2 - Highlights Nano amorphous Interfaces in phase-change memory materials (Vol. 51, No. 2)

Nano amorphous Interfaces in phase-change memory materials (Vol. 51, No. 2)

Model of nano interface between amorphous and crystalline phases in a PCM material.

Phase-change memory (PCM) is an emerging non-volatile memory technology. It encodes data through the rapid and reversible transition between amorphous and crystalline states of PCM materials.

In this work the effects of three kinds of nano amorphous interfaces in PCM materials are summarised, i.e. interfaces could either enhance phase stability (the amorphous Si/amorphous Sb2Te3 interface and the amorphous GeTe/cubic Sb2Te3 interface) or promote crystallization (the amorphous/crystalline GeSbTe interface). Therefore, these nano interfaces can be used to enhance data-retention ability or accelerate data-encoding speed.

X.-P. Wang, Y.-T. Liu, Y.-J. Chen, N.-K. Chen and X.-B. Li, Nanoscale amorphous interfaces in phase-change memory materials: structure, properties and design, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 53, 114002 (2020)
[Abstract]