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Large Optical Transitions in Rewritable Digital Versatile Discs: An Interlayer Atomic Zipper in a SbTe Alloy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2011

Junji Tominaga ,
Paul Fons ,
Takayuki Shima ,
Masashi Kuwahara ,
Osamu Suzuki  and
Alexander Kolobov
Junji Tominaga
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan, 81298612924, 81298512902
Paul Fons
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan
Takayuki Shima
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan
Masashi Kuwahara
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan
Osamu Suzuki
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan
Alexander Kolobov
Affiliation:
[email protected], National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, Center for Applied Near-Field Optics Research, Tsukuba Central 4, 1-1-1 Higashi, Tsukuba, 305-8562, Japan
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Abstract

Chalcogenides, in particular germanium-antimony-tellurium (GeSbTe) and antimony-rich tellurium (R-SbTe) based alloys, are the most technologically significant alloys currently being applied to recordable optical storage as typified by rewritable digital versatile discs (DVD-RW), DVD random access memory, (DVD-RAM). The same alloys are also being applied to nonvolatile random access memory electrical memory in the form of phase change random access memory (PCRAM). In 2004, the phase transition mechanism of GeSbTe was first revealed, demonstrating that the amorphous state is not a random configurational network but is locally well-ordered with the crystalline to amorphous switching process being based upon Ge atoms moving between octahedral and tetrahedral symmetry positions. The kinetic barrier between these two states gives rise to the non-volatile nature of GeSbTe as a storage medium. In contrast, no theoretical analysis has been proposed for SbTe alloys because a Ge-free system. In this paper, the Sb2Te structure has been investigated using the local density approximation (LDA) using a plane-wave basis and compared with experimental results. The effect of external stress on the structure was also investigated. It was found that Sb2Te undergoes two phase-transitions at around 18 GPa (compressive) and −3 GPa (tensile). In the case of negative stress, the c-axis was found to expanded more than the other axes, giving rise a large refractive index change. We report on coherent (uniaxial) melting induced by the breaking a sigma bond between Sb2Te3 and Sb superlattices. We believe this to be the origin of the phase transition that induces a large change in physical properties.

Keywords

phase transformationelectronic structureoptical properties
Type
Research Article
Information
MRS Online Proceedings Library (OPL) , Volume 1072: Symposium G – Phase-Change Materials for Reconfigurable Electronics and Memory Applications , 2008 , 1072-G06-02
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 2008

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