Thermal conduction in GeSbTe films strongly influences the writing energy and time for phase change memory (PCM) technology. This study measures the thermal conductivity of Ge2Sb2Te5 between 25 and 340°C for layers with thicknesses near 60, 120, and 350nm. A strong thickness dependence of the thermal conductivity is attributed to a combination of thermal boundary resistance (TBR) and microstructural imperfections. Stoichiometric variations significantly alter the phase transition temperatures but do not strongly impact the thermal conductivity at a given temperature. This work makes progress on extracting the TBR for Ge2Sb2Te5 films, which is a critical unknown parameter for PCM simulations.
We demonstrate the all-optical recording of deeply subwavelength data bits in Ge2Sb2Te5 using a near-field scanning optical microscope (NSOM) probe that utilizes a C-aperture fabricated using through membrane focused ion beam milling. Data bits recorded with various optical powers were read out optically by C-aperture NSOM and the physical bit size was measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM). Both optical and AFM measurements were found to be in excellent agreement with simulation. We achieved a minimum physical bit size of 53.5×50.2 nm2 at a wavelength of 980 nm (λ/20) indicating a data density of 223 Gbit/in.2.
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