Amorphous structure and bonding chemistry of aluminium antimonide(AlSb)) alloy for phase-change memory device

Abstract

With the help of first-principles molecular dynamics calculations, we obtained the atomic picture of amorphous AlSb(a-AlSb) for phase-change memory application. Generally, a-AlSb shows sp ³ bonding network, which is the intrinsic characteristic for its good thermal stability. Significant wrong(homogenous) Al-Al bonds can also be observed from the pair correlation function. This hints the amorphous phase may consist of Al cluster and Sb-rich Al-Sb alloy. Recent experiment has observed the Sb-rich region of AlSb alloy can be switched to crystal, on the basis of which, combined with our calculations, we thus propose that on the one hand such a Sb-rich region in a-AlSb can retain the rapid crystallization like pure Sb solid and on the other hand some Al atoms play the important role of stabilizing Sb rich network with sp ³ bonding. The present study offers a microscopic view to understand the phase change mechanism of AlSb alloy for information storage device.

Keywords

AlSb alloy / Amorphous phase / Phase-change memory device / ab initio calculation

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