Wang, GuoxiangShen, XiangNie, QiuhuaChen, FenWang, XunsiFu, JingChen, YuXu, TiefengDai, ShixunZhang, WeiWang, Rongping2015-09-182015-09-180021-8979http://hdl.handle.net/1885/15554This study reports on the synthesis of tellurium-based chalcogenide films that have high thermal stability for phase change memory application. Several Te-based chalcogenide alloys of In-Bi-Te, Ag-Bi-Te, In-Sb-Te, Sn-Sb-Te, Zn-Ge-Te, and Ga-Ge-Te are reported. Their thermal, optical, and electrical properties are investigated. The results show that Bi-Te-based films have a higher crystallization temperature and greater activation energy compared with the other Sb-Te-based and Ge-Te-based films. Especially, In₂.₈Bi₃₆.₆Te₆₀.₆film exhibits high crystallization temperature (252 °C) and great activation energy (5.16 eV), showing much improved amorphous thermal stability. A relatively wider optical band gap (0.674 eV) of thermal annealed In₂.₈Bi₃₆.₆Te₆₀.₆film is obtained. In addition, it also has a higher amorphous/crystalline resistance ratio of about 10⁵, implying that current consumption could be low in the phase-change memory operation.This work was financially supported by the Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61008041, 61107047, and 60978058), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province, China (Grant No. Y1090996), the Natural Science Foundation of Ningbo City, China (Grant No. 2011A610092), the Ningbo optoelectronic materials and devices creative team (Grant No. 2009B21007), the Open Research Fund of State Key Laboratory of Transient Optics and Photonics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. SKLST201010), and sponsored by K. C. Wong Magna Fund in Ningbo University.6 pageshttp://www.sherpa.ac.uk/romeo/issn/0021-8979..."Publishers version/PDF may be used on author's personal website, institutional website or institutional repository" from SHERPA/RoMEO site (as at 18/09/15). Copyright 2012 American Institute of Physics. This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and the American Institute of Physics. The following article appeared in Journal of Applied Physics and may be found at https://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4711069Keywords: Chalcogenide alloy; Chalcogenide films; Crystallization temperature; Current consumption; High thermal stability; Memory operations; Phase changes; Resistance ratio; Activation energy; Amorphous films; Electric properties; Germanium; Tellurium; Tellurium2012-05-0410.1063/1.47110692016-02-24