Structural study on the crystallization behavior of Sb3Te2 alloy for phase change memory

Abstract

The atomic crystal structure of the Sb3Te2 binary alloy has been investigated with high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HR-TEM) and fast Fourier transform patterns. As a result, there is inconsistency between the previous theoretical model and the experimental result. But, from the calculations of lattice parameters and the number of layers in the unit cell, it is found that the Sb3Te2 alloy can be crystallized into the Sb2Te structure with P (3) over bar ml space group and the difference between stacking sequences of the Sb3Te2 and the Sb2Te structures has been discussed with the proposed atomic arrangement model of unit cells.