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Phase-change materials

Disorder can be good

Nature Materials volume 10, pages 170–171 (2011)Cite this article

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The observation that disorder leads to a transition from metallic to insulating behaviour in the crystalline phase of GeSb2Te4 provides a new look at its transport properties, crucial for old and new applications of phase-change materials in non-volatile-memory devices.

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Figure 1: Metal–insulator transition in several samples of crystalline phase-change materials.
Figure 2: Dependence of the resistance of a single sample on annealing in several temperature cycles.

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  1. Michael Schreiber is in the Institute of Physics, Chemnitz University of Technology, 09107 Chemnitz, Germany.,

    Michael Schreiber

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  1. Michael Schreiber
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Correspondence to Michael Schreiber.

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Schreiber, M. Disorder can be good. Nature Mater 10, 170–171 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2972

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