Abstract
The influence of interface layers on the chemical and electronic states of a phase-change recording material, GeBiTe (GBT) alloy, used in high-speed rewritable HD DVD media was investigated for the first time by hard-X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HX-PES). The binding state of elements for the amorphous state of the phase-change recording film with interface layers is closer to that of the crystalline state than the amorphous film without interface layers. The density of states (DOS) for the valence band of the amorphous state without an interface layer was smaller than that of the crystalline state. The band-edge energy of the amorphous state without an interface layer was lower than that of the crystalline state by about 0.5 eV. On the other hand, the DOS and the band-edge energy of the amorphous state of GBT with interface layers were almost the same as those of the crystalline state. This result may lead to almost the same carrier density for electrical conduction for the crystalline state as the amorphous state, which is totally unexpected, thus very interesting, because the atomic arrangements should differ from each other. We speculate that these effects are a factor allowing high-speed crystallization.