XPS Study of Thermally Evaporated Ge-Sb-Te Amorphous Thin Films

Amorphous thin films were prepared from the bulk composition of Ge(22)Sb(22)Te(56) (GST) alloy by thermal evaporation in good vacuum condition. The amorphous nature of as-deposited films was checked with x-ray diffraction (XRD) studies. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) has been used to determine the binding energies of the core electrons in amorphous thin GST films. In XPS, we performed the survey scan from the binding energy (BE) range from 0-1100 eV and core level spectra of Ge 3d, Sb 3d and Te 3d.