Abstract

Silicon-based Flash non-volatile electronic-memory technology will soon reach the end of its developmental roadmap. Hence, there is an urgent need for new non-volatile memory technologies to supercede Flash. In this talk, I will describe one such candidate, namely phase-change memory, wherein ultra-rapid (ns) reversible phase transformations between crystalline and amorphous phases of materials, such as Ge-Sb-Te, can be used to store non-volatile binary bits of information in terms of the electrical-resistivity contrast between crystal and glass. In particular, I will discuss ab initio molecular-dynamics simulations of the amorphisation/crystallisation behaviour of such materials, and explain how this approach can be used for the rational design of memory materials having better performance, such as even shorter crystallisation times that might enable such non-volatile memory elements to replace DRAM .