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Type: 
Journal
Description: 
A long-standing question for avant-grade data storage technology concerns the nature of the ultrafast photoinduced phase transformations in the wide class of chalcogenide phase-change materials (PCMs). Overall, a comprehensive understanding of the microstructural evolution and the relevant kinetics mechanisms accompanying the out-of-equilibrium phases is still missing. Here, after overheating a phase-change chalcogenide superlattice by an ultrafast laser pulse, we indirectly track the lattice relaxation by time resolved X-ray absorption spectroscopy (tr-XAS) with a sub-ns time resolution. The novel approach to the tr-XAS experimental results reported in this work provides an atomistic insight of the mechanism that takes place during the cooling process, meanwhile a first-principles model mimicking the microscopic distortions accounts for a straightforward representation of the observed dynamics. Finally, we envisage that our approach can be applied in future studies addressing the role of dynamical structural strain in phase-change materials.
Publisher: 
Publication date: 
26 May 2016
Authors: 

Marco Malvestuto, Antonio Caretta, Barbara Casarin, Federico Cilento, Martina Dell'Angela, Daniele Fausti, Raffaella Calarco, Bart J Kooi, Enrico Varesi, John Robertson, Fulvio Parmigiani

Biblio References: 
Origin: 
arXiv preprint arXiv:1605.08157