2018, Boschker, Jos E., Lü, Xiang, Bragaglia, Valeria, Wang,Ruining, Grahn, Holger T., Calarco, Raffaella

Phase change materials such as pseudobinary GeTe-Sb2Te3 (GST) alloys are an essential part of existing and emerging technologies. Here, we investigate the electrical and optical properties of epitaxial phase change materials: α-GeTe, Ge2Sb2Te5 (GST225), and Sb2Te3. Temperature-dependent Hall measurements reveal a reduction of the hole concentration with increasing temperature in Sb2Te3 that is attributed to lattice expansion, resulting in a non-linear increase of the resistivity that is also observed in GST225. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy at room temperature demonstrates the presence of electronic states within the energy gap for α-GeTe and GST225. We conclude that these electronic states are due to vacancy clusters inside these two materials. The obtained results shed new light on the fundamental properties of phase change materials such as the high dielectric constant and persistent photoconductivity and have the potential to be included in device simulations.

2014, Wang, K., Gu, Y., Zhou, H.F., Zhang, L.Y., Kang, C.Z., Wu, M.J., Pan, W.W., Lu, P.F., Gong, Q., Wang, S.M.

InPBi was predicted to be the most robust infrared optoelectronic material but also the most difficult to synthesize within In-VBi (V = P, As and Sb) 25 years ago. We report the first successful growth of InPBi single crystals with Bi concentration far beyond the doping level by gas source molecular beam epitaxy. The InPBi thin films reveal excellent surface, structural and optical qualities making it a promising new III–V compound family member for heterostructures. The Bi concentration is found to be 2.4 ± 0.4% with 94 ± 5% Bi atoms at substitutional sites. Optical absorption indicates a band gap of 1.23 eV at room temperature while photoluminescence shows unexpectedly strong and broad light emission at 1.4–2.7 μm which can't be explained by the existing theory.

2016, Mitrofanov, Kirill V., Fons, Paul, Makino, Kotaro, Terashima, Ryo, Shimada, Toru, Kolobov, Alexander, V., Tominaga, Junji, Bragaglia, Valeria, Giussani, Alessandro, Calarco, Raffaella, Riechert, Henning, Sato, Takahiro, Katayama, Tetsuo, Ogawa, Kanade, Togashi, Tadashi, Yabashi, Makina, Wall, Simon, Brewe, Dale, Hase, Muneaki

Phase-change materials based on Ge-Sb-Te alloys are widely used in industrial applications such as nonvolatile memories, but reaction pathways for crystalline-to-amorphous phase-change on picosecond timescales remain unknown. Femtosecond laser excitation and an ultrashort x-ray probe is used to show the temporal separation of electronic and thermal effects in a long-lived (>100 ps) transient metastable state of Ge2Sb2Te5 with muted interatomic interaction induced by a weakening of resonant bonding. Due to a specific electronic state, the lattice undergoes a reversible nondestructive modification over a nanoscale region, remaining cold for 4 ps. An independent time-resolved x-ray absorption fine structure experiment confirms the existence of an intermediate state with disordered bonds. This newly unveiled effect allows the utilization of non-thermal ultra-fast pathways enabling artificial manipulation of the switching process, ultimately leading to a redefined speed limit and improved energy efficiency and reliability of phase-change memory technologies.

2014, Bang, Do, Awano, Hiroyuki, Tominaga, Junji, Kolobov, Alexander V., Fons, Paul, Saito, Yuta, Makino, Kotaro, Nakano, Takashi, Hase, Muneaki, Takagaki, Yukihiko, Giussani, Alessandro, Calarco, Raffaella, Murakami, Shuichi

Interfacial phase change memory (iPCM), that has a structure of a superlattice made of alternating atomically thin GeTe and Sb2Te3 layers, has recently attracted attention not only due to its superior performance compared to the alloy of the same average composition in terms of energy consumption but also due to its strong response to an external magnetic field (giant magnetoresistance) that has been speculated to arise from switching between topological insulator (RESET) and normal insulator (SET) phases. Here we report magneto-optical Kerr rotation loops in the visible range, that have mirror symmetric resonances with respect to the magnetic field polarity at temperatures above 380 K when the material is in the SET phase that has Kramers-pairs in spin-split bands. We further found that this threshold temperature may be controlled if the sample was cooled in a magnetic field. The observed results open new possibilities for use of iPCM beyond phase-change memory applications.

2018, Ishikawa, Fumitaro, Higashi, Kotaro, Fuyuno, Satoshi, Morifuji, Masato, Kondow, Masahiko, Trampert, Achim

We study the effects of annealing on (Ga0.64,In0.36) (N0.045,As0.955) using hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray absorption fine structure measurements. We observed surface oxidation and termination of the N-As bond defects caused by the annealing process. Specifically, we observed a characteristic chemical shift towards lower binding energies in the photoelectron spectra related to In. This phenomenon appears to be caused by the atomic arrangement, which produces increased In-N bond configurations within the matrix, as indicated by the X-ray absorption fine structure measurements. The reduction in the binding energies of group-III In, which occurs concomitantly with the atomic rearrangements of the matrix, causes the differences in the electronic properties of the system before and after annealing.