title: Crystallization kinetics of the phase change material GeSb6Te measured with dynamic transmission electron microscopy.
abstract: GeSb6Te is a chalcogenide-based phase change material that has shown great ptoential for use in solid-state memory devices. The crystallization kinetics of amorphous thin films of GeSb6Te during laser crystallization were followed with dynamic transmission electron microscopy, a photo-emission electron microscopy technique with nanosecond-scale time resolution. Nine-frame movies of crystal growth were taken during laser crystallization. The nucleation rate is observed to be very low and the growth rates are very high, up to 10.8 m s(-1) for amorphous as-deposited films and significantly higher for an amorphous film subject to sub-threshold laser annealing before crystallization. The measured growth rates exceed any directly measured growth rate of a phase change material. The crystallization is reminiscent of explosive crystallization of elemental semiconductors both in the magnitude of the growth rate and in the resulting crystalline microstructures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA. melissa.santala@oregonstate.edu.
authors.forename: M M
authors.initials: MM
authors.lastname: Winseck
authors.affiliation: IBM/Macronix PCRAM Joint Project, Macronix Emerging Central Laboratory, Macronix International Co., Ltd., 16 Li-Hsin Rd., Science Park, Hsinchu, Taiwan.
authors.forename: H-Y
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Cheng
authors.affiliation: Materials Science Division, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550, USA.
authors.forename: G H
authors.initials: GH
authors.lastname: Campbell
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97330, USA. melissa.santala@oregonstate.edu.
authors.forename: M K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Santala