Effect of carbon and nitrogen doping on the structure of amorphous GeTe phase change material

Carbon and Nitrogen-doped GeTe are promising materials for use in phase change memories since the addition of C or N increases the stability of the amorphous phase. By combining ab initio molecular dynamics and X-ray scattering experiments, we show that carbon deeply modifies the structure of the amorphous phase through long carbon chains, tetrahedral and triangular units centred on carbon. A clear signature of these units is the appearance of an additional interatomic distance around 3.3 A in the pair correlation function. Besides, the first Ge-Ge and Ge-Te distances are almost not affected by doping. The implications for the vibrational and thermal properties are finally discussed.