Electrical switching properties and structural characteristics of GeSe-GeTe films

Germanium chalcogenides, especially GeSe and GeTe alloys, have recently gained popularity because of their Ovonic threshold (volatile) and memory (non-volatile) switching properties, with great potential for electric storage applications. Materials designed in a pseudo-binary way may possess superior properties in their phase transition, e.g. GeTe-Sb2Te3 materials, and bring about revolutionary advances in optical storage. However, to date, the electrical switching behaviors of films of pseudo-binary GeSe-GeTe have not yet been studied, and neither have the structural characteristics. Herein, we present both the thermally and electrically induced switching behaviors of GeSe-GeTe film, as well as the structural evolution due to composition tuning. The crystallization temperature of GeSe-GeTe films increases with GeSe content quite sensitively. An atom-resolved picture of the GeSe-GeTe alloy with a state-of-the-art atomic mapping technology has been presented, where a randomly mixed arrangement of Se and Te atoms is determined unambiguously in Ge50Se13Te34 with a GeTe-like rhombohedral structure. The local structural motifs in GeSe-GeTe, more specifically, sixfold coordinated octahedra with a distinguished degree of Peierls distortion and geometric variety, are essential to understand its electric properties. GeSe-GeTe alloy, Ge50Se13Te34, based memory cells have been fabricated, showing a fast memory switching behavior and excellent retention of 10 years at 208 °C.