Spectroscopic study of nitrogen incorporation in Ge, Sb, and Te elemental systems: A step toward the understanding of nitrogen effect in phase-change materials

Nitrogen doping in chalcogenide materials represents a promising way for the improvement of material properties. Indeed, N doping in GeSbTe phase-change alloys have demonstrated to greatly enhance thermal stability of their amorphous phase, necessary to ensure the data retention of the final phase-change memory device. Although it is suggested that the N doping in such alloys leads to the preferential formation of Ge-N bonds, further questions concerning the bonding, in particular, Sb-N and Te-N, and the structural arrangement remain unclear. In this paper, we present a study of as-deposited elemental Ge, Sb, and Te systems and their nitrides (i.e., GeN, SbN, and TeN alloys), using a large range of N content from 0 up to about 50 at. %. The as-deposited alloys are investigated by Fourier transform infrared and Raman spectroscopy. We identify the active vibrational modes associated with the formation of Ge-N, Sb-N, and Te-N bonds, highlighting the impact of N incorporation on the structure of these elemental systems. We further qualitatively compare the GeN, SbN, and TeN experimental spectra with the “ab initio” simulations of the related ideal nitride structures. Finally, the analysis of elemental nitride layers is extended to N-doped GeSbTe alloys, providing deeper understanding of nitrogen bonding in such ternary systems, employed in memory technology.