@article{cca0e7802ce34b51b315b0623ee9d117,
title = "Distortion of Local Atomic Structures in Amorphous Ge-Sb-Te Phase Change Materials",
abstract = "The local atomic structures of amorphous Ge-Sb-Te phase-change materials have yet to be clarified and the rapid crystal-amorphous phase change resulting in distinct optical contrast is not well understood. We report the direct observation of local atomic structures in amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 using {"}local{"} reverse Monte Carlo modeling dedicated to an angstrom-beam electron diffraction analysis. The results corroborated the existence of local structures with rocksalt crystal-like topology that were greatly distorted compared to the crystal symmetry. This distortion resulted in the breaking of ideal octahedral atomic environments, thereby forming local disordered structures that basically satisfied the overall amorphous structure factor. The crystal-like distorted octahedral structures could be the main building blocks in the formation of the overall amorphous structure of Ge-Sb-Te.",
author = "A. Hirata and T. Ichitsubo and Guan, {P. F.} and T. Fujita and Chen, {M. W.}",
note = "Funding Information: This work was partially sponsored by Fusion Research Funds from the “World Premier International Research Center Initiative for Atoms, Molecules, and Materials” program of the MEXT of Japan, JSPS KAKENHI (Grants No. JP17H01325 and No. JP26310205), and the Cross-Ministerial Strategic Innovation Promotion Program (Structural Materials for Innovation D72) of the Ministry of Agriculture, Japan. The authors gratefully acknowledge Dr. Shinji Kohara at NIMS for providing us with x-ray scattering data of amorphous Ge-Sb-Te. The authors would like to thank Professor Noboru Yamada at Kyoto University and Professor A. L. Greer at University of Cambridge for the fruitful discussion. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2018 American Physical Society.",
year = "2018",
month = may,
day = "18",
doi = "10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.205502",
language = "English",
volume = "120",
journal = "Physical Review Letters",
issn = "0031-9007",
publisher = "American Physical Society",
number = "20",
}