Preparation and characterization of laser-irradiation induced amorphous for Ge_2Sb_2Te_5 phase-change materials

It has been a challenge to fully understand the structural characteristics of laser-irradiation induced amorphous(L-a) Ge2Sb2Te5(GST) alloy due to the difficulties of collecting diffraction data from high purity specimens. In this paper,by fabricating GST thin films on different substrates,we exhibit an effective way of preparing L-a GST dots in submicron scale on various types of specially designed transmission electron microscope(TEM) grids. The structural characteristics of L-a GST in the form of pair distribution functions(PDF) can be achieved on single dots of L-a GST via selected area electron diffraction(SAED) . This general approach would be convenient for precisely producing laser-irradiation induced materials in submicron scale for structural investigation.