AgInSbTe, or Silver-Indium-Antimony-Tellurium, is a phase change material from the group of chalcogenide glasses, used in rewritable optical discs and phase-change memory applications. It is a quaternary compound of silver, indium, antimony, and tellurium. It is often used in rewritable CDs. In its most common usage, the term phase change indicates that a substance has changed among the three classical phases of matter: solid, liquid and gas. ... A Chalcogenide glass is a glass containing a chalcogenide element (sulphur, selenium or tellurium) as a substantial constituent. ... In computing, sound reproduction, and video, an optical disc is flat, circular, usually polycarbonate disc whereon data is stored. ... Phase-change memory is a type of non-volatile computer memory based on a phase change material whose resistance changes depending on the mechanical phase of the material. ... General Name, Symbol, Number silver, Ag, 47 Chemical series transition metals Group, Period, Block 11, 5, d Appearance lustrous white metal Atomic mass 107. ... General Name, Symbol, Number indium, In, 49 Chemical series poor metals Group, Period, Block 13, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous gray Atomic mass 114. ... General Name, Symbol, Number antimony, Sb, 51 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 15, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous grey Atomic mass 121. ... General Name, Symbol, Number tellurium, Te, 52 Chemical series metalloids Group, Period, Block 16, 5, p Appearance silvery lustrous gray Atomic mass 127. ... Compact Disc ReWritable (CD-RW) is a rewritable optical disc format. ...

During writing, the material is first erased, initialized into its crystalline state, with long, lower-intensity laser irradiation. The material heats up to its crystallization temperature, but not up to its melting point, and crystallizes in a metastable face-centered cubic structure. Then the information is written on the crystalline phase, by heating spots of it with short (<10 ns), high-intensity laser pulses; the material locally melts and is quickly cooled, remaining in the amorphous phase. As the amorphous phase has lower reflectivity than the crystalline phase, the bitstream can be recorded as "dark" amorphous spots on the crystalline background. At low linear velocities, clusters of crystalline material can exist in the amorphous spots. [1] Crystal (disambiguation) Insulin crystals A crystal is a solid in which the constituent atoms, molecules, or ions are packed in a regularly ordered, repeating pattern extending in all three spatial dimensions. ... Metastability is the ability of a non-equilibrium state to persist for a long period of time. ... In crystallography, the cubic crystal system is the most symmetric of the 7 crystal systems. ... An amorphous solid is a solid in which there is no long-range order of the positions of the atoms. ...

Other similar material is eg. GeSbTe. It offers lower linear density, but has higher overwrite cycles by 1-2 orders of magnitude. It is used in pit-and-groove recording formats, often in rewritable DVDs. The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. ...