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An alloy of antimony, germanium and tellurium (GST) has a curious feature: when heated it passes from the amorphous to the crystalline state, in other words - it is a material with a variable phase. The consequence of this process are changes in material properties, including optical and electrical. This fact has been noticed, and GST for a long time been used as a component to create a rewritable optical disks. However, the mechanics of phase transition between the states has not been fully understood.
Engineers have placed between two diamonds, GST, creating the necessary pressure on the alloy, and watched it through X-ray. They concluded that this material is undervalued in the storage of digital information. After collecting enough data, scientists were able to create a computer model of a phase transition, and, having studied it was concluded that the possibility of controlling the process.
It was found that during the change of phase state of electrical resistance , the alloy can be forced to change, and if you store the data in the form of resistance values, the recording density on the GST can be very high. According to the authors, this memory is more stable than flash memory, and will operate up to 100 times faster, keeping about 100 thousand write cycles, like high-end modern solid-state drives . Related Products :
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