Individualized Pixel Synthesis and Characterization of Combinatorial Materials Chips

Conventionally, an experimentally determined phase diagram requires studies of phase formation at a range of temperatures for each composition, which takes years of effort from multiple research groups. Combinatorial materials chip technology, featuring high-throughput synthesis and characterization, is able to determine the phase diagram of an entire composition spread of a binary or ternary system at a single temperature on one materials library, which, though significantly increasing efficiency, still requires many libraries processed at a series of temperatures in order to complete a phase diagram. In this paper, we propose a “one-chip method” to construct a complete phase diagram by individually synthesizing each pixel step by step with a progressive pulse of energy to heat at different temperatures while monitoring the phase evolution on the pixel in situ in real time. Repeating this process pixel by pixel throughout the whole chip allows the entire binary or ternary phase diagram to be mapped on one chip in a single experiment. The feasibility of this methodology is demonstrated in a study of a Ge-Sb-Te ternary alloy system, on which the amorphous-crystalline phase boundary is determined.