Figure 2: Impact of tetrahedral environments on the global stability of amorphous GeTe. | Nature Communications

Figure 2: Impact of tetrahedral environments on the global stability of amorphous GeTe.

From: Aging mechanisms in amorphous phase-change materials

Figure 2

(a) Energy difference per atom, fraction of homopolar GeGe bonds, and stress of the relaxed models obtained by melt-quenching (green) and different chemical replacement procedures, substituting atoms from amorphous SnTe (violet), GeSe (light magenta) and SiTe (grey). (b–d) These panels correspond to different atomic configurations of amorphous GeTe in the energy difference plot. Te, tetrahedral Ge and defective octahedral Ge atoms are rendered with blue, red and orange spheres. The disappearance of tetrahedrally coordinated Ge atoms going from model b to d is clearly discernible.

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