Preferred location for conducting filament formation in thin-film nano-ionic electrolyte: study of microstructure by atom-probe tomography
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Publication Date
2017-05Journal Title
Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics
ISSN
0957-4522
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Volume
28
Issue
9
Pages
6846-6851
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
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Orava, J., Wen, Y., Prikryl, J., Wagner, T., Stelmashenko, N., Chen, M., & Greer, A. (2017). Preferred location for conducting filament formation in thin-film nano-ionic electrolyte: study of microstructure by atom-probe tomography. Journal of Materials Science: Materials in Electronics, 28 (9), 6846-6851. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-017-6383-y
Abstract
© 2017, The Author(s). Atom-probe tomography of Ag-photodoped amorphous thin-film Ge 40 S 60 , the material of interest in nano-ionic memory and lateral geometry MEMS technologies, reveals regions with two distinct compositions on a nanometer length-scale. One type of region is Ag-rich and of a size typically extending beyond the measured sample volume of ~40 × 40 × 80 nm 3 . These type-I regions contain aligned nanocolumns, ~5 nm wide, that are the likely location for reversible diffusion of Ag + ions and associated growth/dissolution of conducting filaments. The nanocolumns become relatively Ag-rich during the photodoping, and the pattern of Ag enrichment originates from the columnar-porous structure of the as-deposited film that is to some extent preserved in the electrolyte after photodoping. Type-II regions have lower Ag content, are typically 10–20 nm across, and appear to conform to the usual description of the photoreaction products of the optically-induced dissolution and diffusion of silver in a thin-film chalcogenide. The microstructure, with two types of region and aligned nanocolumns, is present in the electrolyte after photodoping without any applied bias, and is important for understanding switching mechanisms, and writing and erasing cycles, in programmable-metallization-cell memory.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10854-017-6383-y
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/271642
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