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Rapid Phase Transition of Al2O3 Encapsulated MoTe2 via Thermal Annealing
Published
Author(s)
Rohan Sengupta, Saroj Dangi, Sergiy Krylyuk, Albert Davydov, Spyridon Pavlidis
Abstract
MoTe2 has gained a lot of attention recently as a potential phase change material candidate for low-power nonvolatile switches and high-density memory applications, due to the smallest predicted energy offset between its semiconducting 2H and semimetallic 1T' crystal structures. Here, we report fast, non-destructive and full phase change of Al2O3-encapsulated 2H-MoTe2 thin films to 1T'-MoTe2 using rapid thermal annealing at 900 °C. Phase change was confirmed using Raman spectroscopy after very short annealing duration of 10 s both in vacuum and nitrogen ambient. No thickness dependence of the transition temperatures was observed for flake thickness ranging from 1.5 nm to 8 nm. This is an important step towards evaluating the suitability of MoTe2 as a phase change material for designing devices for various electronic applications where external Joule heating can be used to obtain conductivity modulation.
Sengupta, R.
, Dangi, S.
, Krylyuk, S.
, Davydov, A.
and Pavlidis, S.
(2022),
Rapid Phase Transition of Al2O3 Encapsulated MoTe2 via Thermal Annealing, Applied Physics Letters, [online], https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0097844, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=935019
(Accessed October 1, 2025)