Estimating Ag-Cu Nanoalloy Applicability for PCM Data Recording

The paper studies applicability of individual particles of Ag-Cu nanoalloys as data bits in the next generation memory devices constructed on the phase change memory principle. To fulfill this task, the structure formation was simulated with the molecular dynamics method on cooling from the melt of Ag-Cu nanoparticles of the diameter of 2.0 – 8.0 nm of different chemical compositions (with copper content in the alloy from 10 to 50 percent), based on the modified tight-binding potential (TB-SMA). The authors investigated the influence of the size effects and the heat removal rate on the formation of the clusters structure. The investigation showed that different internal structures can be developed upon cooling from the liquid phase, so there were determined some criteria of their stability. Clusters with copper content of not more than 10% and diameters of more than 6.0 nm were isolated from the entire set of the considered particles.