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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik
MM 17: Poster Ib
MM 17.18: Poster
Montag, 18. März 2024, 18:30–20:30, Poster F
Ab-initio simulation of electronic transport in amorphous phase change materials — •Nils Holle1, Sebastian Walfort1, Riccardo Mazzarello2, and Martin Salinga1 — 1University of Münster, Institute of Materials Physics, 48149 Münster — 2Sapienza Università di Roma, Department of Physics, I-00185 Roma
As the global demand for computing resources continues to grow, the need to improve the energy efficiency of computing hardware is becoming increasingly important. The miniaturisation of electronic devices based on phase change materials (PCMs) has been shown to enable significant reductions in power consumption. These materials exist in both a crystalline and an amorphous configuration and exhibit a strong electrical contrast between these configurations. This makes them interesting for a wide range of applications, such as data storage and neuromorphic computing. A detailed understanding of electronic transport is a crucial step towards designing a new generation of energy-efficient functional electronic devices. However, despite many years of research, electronic transport in amorphous PCMs is still not fully understood, as it is complicated by disorder and its consequences, such as structural inhomogeneity. We study transport in a single-element PCM that is strongly confined between adjacent electrodes. The combination of density functional theory and non-equilibrium Green’s functions provides the ideal means to gain ab-initio insight into electronic structure and transport on an atomistic scale. Based on our observations, we propose a new physical picture where conductivity is governed by local variations in Peierls-like distortions.
Keywords: phase change materials; density functional theory; non-equilibrium Green's functions; electronic transport; Peierls distortion