Rapid-phase transitions of GeTe-Sb2Te3 pseudobinary amorphous thin films for an optical disk memory

TLDR

The GeTe‑Sb₂Te₃ pseudobinary films cool at >10¹⁰ °C s⁻¹, enabling molten material to spontaneously become amorphous while low‑power laser pulses convert the same region to crystalline. By sandwiching the films between heat‑conductive ZnS layers, sub‑50‑ns laser pulses can crystallize (low power) or re‑amorphize (high power) the material, with the rapid crystallization driven by the pseudobinary composition, fcc symmetry, and large amorphous‑to‑crystal energy difference. The amorphous–crystalline transition produces a large optical contrast (n + ik from 4.7 + 1.3i to 6.9 + 2.6i or 5.0 + 1.3i to 6.5 + 3.5i), and TEM, DSC, XRD confirm the crystalline phase is a GeTe‑like fcc structure.

Abstract

Amorphous films having a component of the stoichiometric GeTe-Sb2Te3 pseudobinary alloy system, GeSb2Te4 or Ge2Sb2Te5 representatively, were found to have featuring characteristics for optical memory material presenting a large optical change and enabling high-speed one-beam data rewriting. The material films being sandwiched by heat-conductive ZnS layers can be crystallized (low power) or reamorphized (high power) by laser irradiation of very short duration, less than 50 ns. The cooling speed of the sandwiched film is extremely high: more than 1010 deg/s, which permits the molten material to convert to the amorphous state spontaneously; whereas, a low-power pulse irradiation of the same duration changed the exposed portion into the crystalline state. The optical constant changes between the amorphous state and the crystalline state of them were measured to be large: from 4.7+i1.3 to 6.9+i2.6 and from 5.0+i1.3 to 6.5+i3.5, respectively. The crystallized portion was known to have a GeTe-like fcc structure by an analytical experiment using transmission electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetry, and x-ray and electron diffraction methods. The high crystallization speed is ascribed to (1) the pseudobinary system which can form crystalline compositions without any phase separation, (2) the high symmetry of the fcc structure which is the nearest to the random amorphous structure, (3) the high-energy difference between the amorphous state and the fcc crystal state.