Dresden 2014 – scientific programme

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DS: Fachverband Dünne Schichten

DS 39: Focus Session: Resistive Switching by Redox and Phase Change Phenomena VI (Kinetics and Transport in PC materials)

DS 39.1: Invited Talk

Thursday, April 3, 2014, 09:30–10:00, CHE 89

Switching kinetics in phase change materials — •Martin Salinga — RWTH Aachen, Sommerfeldstrasse 14, 52074 Aachen, Germany

Phase change materials are essential ingredients for next-generation electronic memory devices and reconfigurable electronics for their ability to be switched between states with very different resistivity within nanoseconds upon electrical excitation, while being stable over many years otherwise. It is these materials’ characteristic combination of electronic excitability of their amorphous phase and their unconventional structural transformations that makes this seeming contradiction possible. Thorough experimental investigations of both phenomena allowed us to gain deeper insights into the fundamental properties of this family of materials. Recently the crystallization kinetics could be traced back to an extremely high fragility of the undercooled liquid phase. A comprehensive model including the quenching rate dependence of the glass formation and relaxation processes in the glass managed to explain the different experimental observations reported in literature. Our investigations of transient effects in electrical excitation of phase change materials concentrate on the changes around the threshold for resistivity breakdown in the amorphous phase. The results from both studies are discussed to give guidance to experimentalists and theoreticians aiming for a fundamental understanding of the physics of phase change materials.