Regensburg 2007 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 20: Poster session

MM 20.52: Poster

Dienstag, 27. März 2007, 14:45–18:00, Poster C

Tailoring phase change materials: Stoichiometrical trends in the Ge-Sb-Te system — •Michael Klein, Daniel Wamwangi, and Matthias Wuttig — I. Physikalisches Institut 1A, RWTH Aachen, 52056 Aachen, Germany

Phase change materials are widely used as the active layer in rewritable optical media. This layer can be reversibly switched with a laser beam between an amorphous and crystalline state. As there is a pronounced optical contrast between these two phases, this provides the possibility to write, read and erase data. The speed of this method is limited by the speed of crystallization, as crystallization is the slower process. One possibility to make this process faster is to change the composition of this active layer. Thus it is very interesting to investigate how the process of crystallization is affected by a variation of stoichiometry. Although phase change materials technology is already used, there is little knowledge of the phase change process itself. Today the usability of phase change materials is still identified by try and error methods. We will show stoichiometrical trends of different properties relevant for data storage, e.g. the crystallisation temperature, which governs the room temperature stability of the amorphous phase and thus is a measure for the data retention time.