Non-isothermal crystallization kinetics of Ge-Cu-Te thin films for phase-change memory

Abstract

We investigated the crystallization kinetics of Ge-Cu-Te ternary system phase-change thin films using non-isothermal differential scanning calorimetry and estimated the kinetic triplet (activation energy, pre-exponential factor, and reaction model) by the combined application of isoconversional and model-fitting approaches at different heating rates over a range of 10–40 K/min for GeCu2Te2 thin films. The results indicate a multi-step crystallization process where the activation energy of crystallization is not constant but decreases via three recognizable stages with crystallization fraction α. The local Avrami exponents suggest that two crystallization mechanisms containing three-dimensional growth with increasing nucleation rates in the range of crystallization fraction α ≤ 0.4 and three- and two-dimensional growths at a decreasing nucleation rate over the wide range of α > 0.4 are responsible for the whole crystallization process. Furthermore, the reaction model displays dependence on the heating rates for the GeCu2Te2 thin films, where heating rates of 10–30 K/min drive a second-order reaction while a three-halve order reaction occurs for a heating rate of 40 K/min, which is different from the second-order reaction for the GeCu2Te3 thin films. Also, both GeCu2Te2 and GeCu2Te3 thin films provide better data retention capability than the Ge2Sb2Te5 thin films without sacrificing the crystallization time. The results indicate that Ge-Cu-Te ternary system thin films have great potentiality in phase-change memory applications.