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Impact of deposition conditions on the crystallization kinetics of amorphous GeTe films

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Abstract

The speed at which phase change memory devices can operate depends strongly on the crystallization kinetics of the amorphous phase. To better understand factors that affect the crystallization rate, we have investigated crystallization of GeTe films as a function of their deposition temperatures and deposition rates, using X-ray synchrotron radiation and Raman spectroscopy. As-deposited films were found to be fully amorphous under all conditions, even though films deposited at higher temperatures and lower rates experienced lower effective quench rates. Non-isothermal transformation curves show that the apparent crystallization temperature of GeTe films decreases with increasing deposition temperature and decreasing deposition rate. It was found that this correlates with a decrease in the activation energy for nucleation (calculated using Kissinger’s analysis), while the activation energy for crystal growth remained unaffected. From Raman spectroscopy measurements, it was found that increasing the deposition temperature or decreasing the deposition rate, and therefore the effective quench rate, reduces the number of homopolar Te–Te bonds and thereby reduces the barrier to crystal nucleation.

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Acknowledgements

The X-ray synchrotron experiments were carried out at Beamline 12.3.2 of the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is supported by the Director, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences Division, of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231 at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, California. The move of the micro-diffraction program from ALS beamline 7.3.3 onto to the ALS Superbend source 12.3.2 was enabled through the NSF Grant #0416243. Special thanks to Mr. Xinglin Wen for assistance in carrying out Raman spectroscopy and Mr. Yu Gao for his help in using the Lingo software. The authors would also like to thank the Singapore-MIT Alliance for funding this work and for providing a scholarship for C.Y. Khoo. The electron microscopy work was carried out in the Facility for Analysis, Characterization, Testing and Simulation (FACTS) in Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials, Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Chee Ying Khoo, Hai Liu & Chee Lip Gan

  2. Advance Materials for Micro- and Nano-Systems, Singapore-MIT Alliance, Singapore, 117576, Singapore

    Chee Ying Khoo, Chee Lip Gan & Carl V. Thompson

  3. Low Energy Electronic Systems, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore, 138602, Singapore

    Wardhana A. Sasangka, Riko I. Made, Chee Lip Gan & Carl V. Thompson

  4. Advance Light Source, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA

    Nobu Tamura & Martin Kunz

  5. Engineering Products Development (EPD) Pillars, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore, 138682, Singapore

    Arief S. Budiman

  6. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Carl V. Thompson

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  1. Chee Ying Khoo
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Khoo, C.Y., Liu, H., Sasangka, W.A. et al. Impact of deposition conditions on the crystallization kinetics of amorphous GeTe films. J Mater Sci 51, 1864–1872 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9493-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-015-9493-z

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