Zener Tunneling Breakdown in Phase-Change Materials Revealed by Intense Terahertz Pulses

Abstract

We have systematically investigated the spatial and temporal dynamics of crystallization that occurs in the phase-change material Ge2Sb2Te5 upon irradiation with an intense THz pulse. THz pump and optical probe spectroscopy revealed that Zener tunneling induces a nonlinear increase in the conductivity of the crystalline phase. This result indicates that the large electric field associated with the THz pulses causes a nonlinear increase only at the edge of the crystallized area. The electric field concentrating in this area causes a temperature increase via Joule heating, which in turn leads to nanometer scale crystal growth parallel to the field and the formation of filamentary conductive domains across the sample.

arXiv commentin press

References in corpus (4)

• Single-cycle THz pulses with amplitudes exceeding 1 MV/cm generated by optical rectification in LiNbO3
• Extremely Nonperturbative Nonlinearities in GaAs Driven by Atomically Strong Terahertz Fields in Gold Metamaterials
• Topological insulating behaviour in conducting property of crystalline Ge-Sb-Te
• Picosecond electric-field-induced threshold switching in phase-change materials

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Roles of band gap and Kane electronic dispersion in the THz-frequency nonlinear optical response in HgCdTe