title: Role of electronic excitation in the amorphization of Ge-Sb-Te alloys.
abstract: First-principles molecular dynamics simulation reveals the effects of electronic excitation in the amorphization of Ge-Sb-Te. The excitation makes the phase change an element-selective process, lowers the critical amorphization temperature considerably, for example, to below 700 K at a 9% excitation, and reduces the atomic diffusion coefficient with respect to that of melt by at least 1 order of magnitude. Noticeably, the resulting structure has fewer wrong bonds and significantly increased phase-change reversibility. Our results point to a new direction in manipulating ultrafast phase-change processes with improved controllability.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics, College of Electronic Science and Engineering, Jilin University, Changchun, China.
authors.forename: Xian-Bin
authors.initials: XB
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: X Q
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Dong
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Z
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: X D
authors.initials: XD
authors.lastname: Han
authors.forename: Hong-Bo
authors.initials: HB
authors.lastname: Sun
authors.forename: S B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Zhang