GSST phase change materials and its utilization in optoelectronic devices: A review

Abstract

Ge-Sb-Se-Te (GSST) materials have recently emerged as an efficient phase change material (PCM) that displays various exceptional properties essential for numerous optoelectronic devices. Our review of the GSST material provides a broad view of its importance, properties, and applications in optoelectronic devices. The GSST materials are the most suitable chalcogenide phase change materials (Ch-PCMs) compared to the most popular Ge-Sb-Te (GST) materials. Considering its importance, we have performed a brief bibliometric analysis based on GSST to gather information regarding its trending research hotspots, which helped us design the review article's overall outline. Along with the discussion on its importance, the bulk and thin film properties and their applications are also explored. Apart from that, the use of the GSST in typical optoelectronic devices based on switching, electrically reconfigurable metasurfaces, non-volatile reconfigurable De-multiplexers, light, and amplitude modulation concepts are also briefly discussed. Such discussion on the GSST not only provides an overall picture of the research progress of the material but also provides hints towards the future prospective of optoelectronic devices with efficient properties and application possibilities. Our further discussions on revolutionary 3D XPoint technologies have briefly outlined the progress, properties, and applications of non-volatile memory.