Weak antilocalization and disorder-enhanced electron interactions in annealed films of the phase-change compound GeSb ₂Te ₄

Phase-change materials can be reversibly switched between amorphous and crystalline states and often show strong contrast in the optical and electrical properties of these two phases. They are now in widespread use for optical data storage, and their fast switching and a pronounced change of resistivity upon crystallization are also very attractive for nonvolatile electronic data storage. Nevertheless, several open questions remain regarding the electronic states and charge transport in these compounds. In this work, we study electrical transport in thin metallic films of the disordered, crystalline phase-change material GeSb ₂Te ₄. We observe weak antilocalization and disorder-enhanced Coulomb interaction effects at low temperatures, and separate the contributions of these two phenomena to the temperature dependence of the resistivity, Hall effect, and magnetoresistance. Strong spin-orbit scattering causes positive magnetoresistance at all temperatures, and a careful analysis of the low-field magnetoresistance allows us to extract the temperature-dependent electron dephasing rate and study other scattering phenomena. We find electron dephasing due to inelastic electron-phonon scattering at higher temperatures, electron-electron scattering dephasing at intermediate temperatures, and a crossover to weak temperature dependence below 1 K.