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Updated: Jun 4, 2025

High-Contrast and Fast Photorheological Switching of a Twist-Bend Nematic Liquid Crystal

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Surface induced crystallization/amorphization of phase change materials.

Mahdi Javanbakht¹, Sajjad Mohebbi¹, Hamed Attariani²

¹Department of Mechanical Engineering, Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan 8415683111, Iran.

|January 3, 2025

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

This study models surface-induced phase changes in Germanium-antimony-tellurium nanolayers using a phase field model. A key finding is that an external surface layer (ESL) affects crystallization and amorphization, with a specific width range optimizing these processes.

Keywords:

GST external surface layer phase change material phase field phase transition surface energy

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Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses

Published on: June 7, 2018

Area of Science:

Materials Science
Condensed Matter Physics
Computational Materials Science

Background:

Phase transformations in nanolayers are critical for materials applications.
Surface effects significantly influence material properties at the nanoscale.
Understanding crystallization and amorphization dynamics is key for device performance.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate surface-induced crystallization and amorphization in Germanium-antimony-tellurium (Ge2Sb2Te5) nanolayers.
To model the effect of an external surface layer (ESL) on phase transformation kinetics.
To determine an optimal ESL width for controlling surface-induced phase changes.

Main Methods:

Utilized a phase field model incorporating Ginzburg-Landau (GL) equations.
Introduced an external surface layer (ESL) with distributed surface energy and elastic properties.
Solved coupled GL and elasticity equations to simulate crystallization and amorphization.

Main Results:

The ESL width significantly impacts crystallization, with optimal growth observed for widths ≤ 1 nm.
ESL accelerates surface nucleus growth but does not alter bulk crystallization rates.
Amorphization temperature decreases with ESL presence, stabilizing for widths ≥ 0.5 nm.
A linear relationship (Δsat/Δη ≅ 6.235Δγ/γin) was established for predicting ESL effects.

Conclusions:

An external surface layer (ESL) plays a crucial role in surface-induced phase transformations of Ge2Sb2Te5 nanolayers.
The optimal ESL width for controlling these transformations is determined to be between 0.5 nm and 1 nm.
The derived linear relationship provides a predictive tool for estimating ESL effects in various surface-induced transformations.