Periodic Relief Fabrication and Reversible Phase Transitions in Amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 Thin Films upon Multi-Pulse Femtosecond Irradiation

Ge2Sb2Te5 based devices attract the attention of researchers due to wide opportunities in designing phase change memory. Herein, we studied a possibility to fabricate periodic micro- and nanorelief at surfaces of Ge2Sb2Te5 thin films on silicon oxide/silicon substrates under multi-pulse femtosecond laser irradiation with the wavelength of 1250 nm. One-dimensional lattices with periods of 1250 ± 90 and 130 ± 30 nm were obtained depending on the number of acted laser pulses. Emergence of these structures can be explained by plasmon-polariton generation and laser-induced hydrodynamic instabilities, respectively. Additionally, formation of the lattices whose spatial period is close to the impacted laser wavelength can be modelled by considering the free carrier contribution under intensive photoexcitation. Raman spectroscopy revealed both crystallization and re-amorphization of the irradiated films. The obtained results show a possibility to fabricate rewritable all-dielectric data-storage devices based on Ge2Sb2Te5 with the periodic relief.