Tuning the Crystallization Mechanism by Composition Vacancy in Phase Change Materials.

Interface-influenced crystallization is crucial to understanding the nucleation- and growth-dominated crystallization mechanisms in phase-change materials (PCMs), but little is known. Here, we find that composition vacancy can reduce the interface energy by decreasing the coordinate number (CN) at the interface. Compared to growth-dominated GeTe, nucleation-dominated GeSbTe (GST) exhibits composition vacancies in the (111) interface to saturate or stabilize the Te-terminated plane.

Rules of hierarchical melt and coordinate bond to design crystallization in doped phase change materials.

While alloy design has practically shown an efficient strategy to mediate two seemingly conflicted performances of writing speed and data retention in phase-change memory, the detailed kinetic pathway of alloy-tuned crystallization is still unclear. Here, we propose hierarchical melt and coordinate bond strategies to solve them, where the former stabilizes a medium-range crystal-like region and the latter provides a rule to stabilize amorphous. The ErSbTe compound we designed achieves writing speed of 3.

Inherent Simple Cubic Lattice Being Responsible for Ultrafast Solid-Phase Change of GeSbTe.

Crystallization of solid is generally slow in kinetics for atoms trapped in solids. Phase-change materials (PCMs) challenge current theory on its ultrafast reversible amorphous-to-crystal transition. Here by using the stochastic surface walking global optimization method, we establish the first global potential energy surface (PES) for GeSbTe.

Mechanisms of metastable states in CuZr systems with glass-like structures.

The local structural inhomogeneity of glasses, as evidenced from broad bond-length distributions (BLDs), has been widely observed. However, the relationship between this particular structural feature and metastable states of glassy solids is poorly understood. It is important to understand the main problems of glassy solids, such as the plastic deformation mechanisms and glass-forming ability.

Effects of partitioned enthalpy of mixing on glass-forming ability.

We explore the inherent reason at atomic level for the glass-forming ability of alloys by molecular simulation, in which the effect of partitioned enthalpy of mixing is studied. Based on Morse potential, we divide the enthalpy of mixing into three parts: the chemical part (ΔEnn), strain part (ΔEstrain), and non-bond part (ΔEnnn). We find that a large negative ΔEnn value represents strong AB chemical bonding in AB alloy and is the driving force to form a local ordered structure, meanwhile the transformed local ordered structure needs to satisfy the condition (ΔEnn/2 + ΔEstrain) < 0 to be stabilized.

Spin polarization gives rise to Cu precipitation in Fe-matrix.

This article tries to uncover the physical reason of Cu precipitation from an Fe matrix at the electronic level. The general rule is obtained that the more bonds among Cu atoms, the more stable the system is. It was shown that Cu would precipitate from the matrix with Fe spin-polarization but not without spin-polarization.