Regensburg 2025 – scientific programme

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MM: Fachverband Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 9: Poster

MM 9.26: Poster

Monday, March 17, 2025, 18:30–20:30, P1

A Phase Change Material's Journey through its Energy Landscape — •Jakob Ballmaier, Sebastian Walfort, Elias Abele, and Martin Salinga — Universität Münster, Institut für Materialphysik

The concept of energy landscapes is highly successful in explaining structural dynamics of supercooled liquids and glasses. Locally stable configurations correspond to local minima of the total potential energy of the system in the high-dimensional phase space. During physical aging a glass can evolve towards lower local minima through a series of saddle points. Experimental observation of this is challenging, since in large systems several saddle points are passed within the shortest resolvable timescales.

Here, we track paths through the energy landscape of a nanoscopic volume of germanium telluride by following the temporal evolution of its electrical resistance. Two regimes turn out to be especially instructive: fast measurements of the resistance immediately after the formation of the glass as well as slower measurements at low temperatures, where the influence of individual relaxation steps on the resistance can be resolved.

Keywords: Phase Change Material; Energy Landscape; Glass; Germanium Telluride; Resistance Drift