Researchers have found electrons that behave as if they have no mass, called Dirac electrons, in a compound used in re-writable discs, such as CDs and DVDs.
The discovery of “massless” electrons in this phase-change material could lead to faster electronic devices, researcher says.
According to them, the compound, GeSb2Te4, is a phase-change material, meaning its atomic structure shifts from amorphous to crystalline under heat.
Each structure has individual properties and is reversible, making the compound an ideal material to use in electronic devices where information can be written and rewritten several times.
“Phase-change materials have attracted a great deal of attention owing to the sharp contrast in optical and electrical properties between their two phases,” said paper author Akio Kimura, professor in the Department of Physical Sciences in the Graduate School of Science and the Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering at Hiroshima University.
“The electronic structure in the amorphous phase has already been addressed, but the experimental study of the electronic structure in the crystalline phase had not yet been investigated, ” he added.
This latest result was published in ACS Nano, a journal of the American Chemical Society, on July 6, 2020.
