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Article
Multistates and Polyamorphism in Phase-Change K₂Sb₈Se₁₃
Journal of the American Chemical Society
  • Saiful M. Islam
  • Lintao Peng
  • Li Zeng
  • Christos D. Malliakas
  • Duck Young Chung
  • D. Bruce Buchholz
  • Thomas Chasapis
  • Ran Li
  • Konstantinos Chrissafis
  • Julia E. Medvedeva, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • For full list of authors, see publisher's website., For full list of authors, see publisher's website.
Abstract

The phase-change (PC) materials in the majority of optical data storage media in use today exhibit a fast, reversible crystal → amorphous phase transition that allows them to be switched between on (1) and off (0) binary states. Solid-state inorganic materials with this property are relatively common, but those exhibiting an amorphous → amorphous transition called polyamorphism are exceptionally rare. K2Sb8Se13 (KSS) reported here is the first example of a material that has both amorphous → amorphous polyamorphic transition and amorphous → crystal transition at easily accessible temperatures (227 and 263 °C, respectively). The transitions are associated with the atomic coordinative preferences of the atoms, and all three states of K2Sb8Se13 are stable in air at 25 °C and 1 atm. All three states of K2Sb8Se13 exhibit distinct optical bandgaps, Eg = 1.25, 1.0, and 0.74 eV, for the amorphous-II, amorphous-I, and crystalline versions, respectively. The room-temperature electrical conductivity increases by more than 2 orders of magnitude from amorphous-I to -II and by another 2 orders of magnitude from amorphous-II to the crystalline state. This extraordinary behavior suggests that a new class of materials exist which could provide multistate level systems to enable higher-order computing logic circuits, reconfigurable logic devices, and optical switches.

Department(s)
Physics
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
Comments
SMI, LP, LZ, DDB, VDP, MG, TJM, MGK, MJB, RL and JEM acknowledge support from the MRSEC program (NSF DMR-1720139) at the Materials Research Center.
Keywords and Phrases
  • Antimony compounds,
  • Computation theory,
  • Computer circuits,
  • Crystalline materials,
  • Digital storage,
  • Logic devices,
  • Optical data storage,
  • Optical switches,
  • Phase change materials,
  • Reconfigurable hardware,
  • Selenium compounds, Amorphous-amorphous transition,
  • Crystal phase transition,
  • Crystal transition,
  • Electrical conductivity,
  • Orders of magnitude,
  • Polyamorphic transitions,
  • Reconfigurable logic,
  • Solid-state materials, Amorphous materials, article,
  • crystal,
  • electric conductivity,
  • logic,
  • room temperature
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2018 American Chemical Society (ACS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
7-1-2018
Publication Date
01 Jul 2018
Disciplines
Citation Information
Saiful M. Islam, Lintao Peng, Li Zeng, Christos D. Malliakas, et al.. "Multistates and Polyamorphism in Phase-Change K₂Sb₈Se₁₃" Journal of the American Chemical Society Vol. 140 Iss. 29 (2018) p. 9261 - 9268 ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/julia-medvedeva/76/