19-07-2011, 03:21 PM
The term “chalcogen” refers to the Group VI elements of the periodic table. “Chalcogenide” refers to alloys containing at least one of these elements such as the alloy of germanium, antimony, and tellurium discussed here. Energy Conversion Devices, Inc. has used this particular alloy to develop a phase-change memory technology used in commercially available rewriteable CD and DVD disks. This phase change technology uses a thermally activated, rapid, reversible change in the structure of the alloy to store data. Since the binary information is represented by two different phases of the material it is inherently non-volatile, requiring no energy to keep the material in either of its two stable structural states.
