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HL: Halbleiterphysik

HL 4: New materials

HL 4.1: Talk

Monday, March 27, 2006, 10:15–10:30, BEY 154

Influence of the stoichiometry on the crystal structure of phase change materials — •Julia Steiner, Henning Dieker, Christoph Steimer, and Matthias Wuttig — I. Institute of Physics (IA), RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany

Phase change materials are characterized by a remarkable property combination. On the one hand they show a pronounced difference in their optical and electronic properties between the amorphous and the crystalline phase. On the other hand the transition between these two phases proceeds very fast. Because of this property combination phase change materials are of both great physical and technological interest. They are already used in optical data storage applications and are investigated as non-volatile electronic memories as well.

Nevertheless the correlation between stoichiometry, crystal structure and physical properties is not yet fully understood. To investigate the correlation between stoichiometry and crystal structure of phase change materials diffraction methods have been employed to identify the structure of different phase change alloys. This comparative analysis allows us to determine systematic trends in the structure of phase change media with changing stoichiometry.