Fig. 14

a Effect of a sequence of 50 ps heating pulses with gradually increased magnitudes (top) on the number of fourfold rings (bottom). b Effect of the temperature pulse duration with a constant magnitude of 700 K (top) on the number of fourfold rings (bottom). c The snapshots of the model are taken from the middle of the rest periods marked A, B, and C in (a) and A, D, E, and F in (b), and show the progressive growth of an initially small crystalline cluster. Atoms forming parts of fourfold rings are coloured purple, and the colour coding of the other atoms is as follows: Ge, blue; Sb, red; Te, green. Reprinted with permission from [95]