The morphology and crystalline phase characteristics of amorphous Ge2Sb2Te5 films irradiated by a picosecond laser were investigated by 3D surface profiler, atomic force microscopy (AFM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) integrated with selected area electron diffraction (SAED). The laser irradiated spot was divided into strong ablation area, gentle ablation area, melting area and irradiation area. By theoretical calculation, the ablation and melting thresholds were determined to be 173.05 mJ cm(-2) and 99.19 mJ cm(-2) respectively. Meantime, the local fine morphologies of the ablation and melting areas were shown and analyzed. We also studied the irradiation area which was made up by the non-phase-change area and phase-change area. In the phase-change area, crystalline phase was determined to be face-centered cubic structure and crystalline phase characteristics for films with different thicknesses were discussed. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.