Phase-Change Memory Materials and Metallic Glasses
This community focuses on the physics and engineering of amorphous and crystalline materials that switch between states to store data, as well as the structural stability of bulk metallic glasses. The work is driven by the need for non-volatile memory devices with low power consumption and high reliability, alongside the development of durable metallic alloys for structural applications.
The research centers on chalcogenide compounds, particularly Ge2Sb2Te5, and their behavior in thin-film configurations. Key themes include threshold switching, resistance drift, and crystallization kinetics, which determine how reliably these materials can be written and read. A significant portion of the work applies these materials to in-memory computing and neuromorphic hardware, using analog resistance states to perform neural network calculations. Concurrently, a distinct strand investigates bulk metallic glasses, focusing on their glass-forming ability, thermal stability, and mechanical properties such as plasticity and corrosion resistance. These two areas share a common foundation in the physics of amorphous structures and phase transitions, but target different end uses: electronic memory versus structural materials.
The community is most heavily represented in research on Selenium, accounting for 1.7% of all Selenium papers, and Tellurium, at 1.9% of all Tellurium papers. Germanium research also forms a notable part of the community, representing 0.8% of that element’s total output.
There are 13,291 papers in this community, with the highest publication volumes in the Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids, Applied Physics Letters, and Journal of Applied Physics.
Recent work includes studies on amorphous phase-change alloys with no resistance drift, neuromorphic integration of phase-change plasmonic platforms, and the tensile plasticity of metallic glasses.