Debdipto Acharya¹, Omar Abou El Kheir¹, Simone Marcorini¹, Marco Bernasconi^1*

1 Department of Materials Science, University of Milano-Bicocca, Via R. Cozzi 55, 20125, Milan, Italy

* Corresponding authors emails: marco.bernasconi@unimib.it

DOI10.24435/materialscloud:t4-kf [version v1]

Publication date: May 23, 2025

How to cite this record

Debdipto Acharya, Omar Abou El Kheir, Simone Marcorini, Marco Bernasconi, Simulation of the crystallization process of Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ nanoconfined in superlattice geometries for phase change memories, Materials Cloud Archive 2025.80 (2025), https://doi.org/10.24435/materialscloud:t4-kf

Description

Phase change materials are the most promising candidates for the realization of artificial synapsis for neuromorphic computing. Different resistance levels corresponding to analogic values of the synapsis conductance can be achieved by modulating the size of an amorphous region embedded in its crystalline matrix. Recently, it has been proposed that a superlattice made of alternating layers of the phase change compound Sb₂Te₃ and of the TiTe₂ confining material allows for a better control of multiple intermediate resistance states and for a lower drift with time of the electrical resistance of the amorphous phase. In this work, we consider to substitute Sb₂Te₃ with the Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ prototypical phase change compound that should feature better data retention. By exploiting molecular dynamics simulations with a machine learning interatomic potential, we have investigated the crystallization kinetics of Ge₂Sb₂Te₅ nanoconfined in geometries mimicking Ge₂Sb₂Te₅/TiTe₂ superlattices. It turns out that nanoconfinement induces a slight reduction in the crystal growth velocities with respect to the bulk, but also an enhancement of the nucleation rate due to heterogeneous nucleation. The results support the idea of investigating Ge₂Sb₂Te₅/TiTe₂ superlattices for applications in neuromorphic devices with improved data retention. The effect on the crystallization kinetics of the addition of van der Waals interaction to the interatomic potential is also discussed.

Materials Cloud sections using this data

Files

File name	Size	Description
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-750K.dump MD5md5:80918920f8b6cfcb394e0a1852e00508	1.7 GiB	Trajectory file of crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 750 K
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-750K.ovito MD5md5:ffbbf87c72dc0bdeebd2df72aa8be66e	2.6 MiB	Ovito session state to visualize the crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 750 K
GST-TiT2-SL-LD-crystallization-750K.dump MD5md5:89ae96cd500236df8c451c03dcf775fe	1.0 GiB	Trajectory file of crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-LD at 750 K
GST-TiT2-SL-LD-crystallization-750K.ovito MD5md5:9f27304dfc4ceaf887213496fa748064	1.6 MiB	Ovito session state to visualize the crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-LD at 750 K
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-700K.dump MD5md5:8a8e43ab66eb4d03e4c1e0ef68879dcb	1.7 GiB	Trajectory file of crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 700 K
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-700K.ovito MD5md5:d9bb6429f9535ceee17b09fd35cf8767	2.6 MiB	Ovito session state to visualize the crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 700 K
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-650K.dump MD5md5:8c74230970f09af5cfd9b9338c31bb61	1.7 GiB	Trajectory file of crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 650 K
GST-TiT2-SL-HD-crystallization-650K.ovito MD5md5:d1b6cd0f4dc4ef0d831a62cd8e701fbc	2.6 MiB	Ovito session state to visualize the crystallization of GST-TiTe2 SL-HD at 650 K
README.pdf MD5md5:7389500e05fb75b016d20202b80d17cb	411.0 KiB	Instructions to open an ovito state file

License

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External references

Keywords

molecular dynamics simulation Neural Network Potential Crystallization Phase Change Materials Neuromophic Computing