Resistive switching (RS) is an interesting property shown by some materials systems that, especially during the last decade, has gained a lot of interest for the fabrication of electronic devices, with electronic nonvolatile memories being those that have received the most attention. The presence and quality of the RS phenomenon in a materials system can be studied using different prototype cells, performing different experiments, displaying different figures of merit, and developing different computational analyses. Therefore, the real usefulness and impact of the findings presented in each study for the RS technology will be also different. This manuscript describes the most recommendable methodologies for the fabrication, characterization, and simulation of RS devices, as well as the proper methods to display the data obtained. The idea is to help the scientific community to evaluate the real usefulness and impact of an RS study for the development of RS technology.

The use of two dimensional (2D) materials to improve the capabilities of electronic devices is a promising strategy that has recently gained much interest in both academy and industry. While the research on 2D metallic and semiconducting materials is well established, the knowledge and 2 applications of 2D insulators are still very scarce. In this report we study the presence of resistive switching (RS) in multilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) using different electrode materials, and we engineer a family of h-BN based resistive random access memories with tunable capabilities.The devices show the coexistence of forming-free bipolar and threshold type RS with low operation voltages down to 0.4 V, high current on/off ratios up to 10 6 , long retention times above 10 hours, as well as low variability. The RS is driven by the grain boundaries (GBs) in the polycrystalline h-BN stack, which allow the penetration of metallic ions from adjacent electrodes. This reaction can be boosted by the generation of B vacancies, which is more abundant at the GBs. To the best of our knowledge, h-BN is the first 2D material showing the coexistance of bipolar and threshold RS, which may open the door to additional functionalities and applications.Received: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))Revised: ((will be filled in by the editorial staff))

Memristive devices, which combine a resistor with memory functions such that voltage pulses can change their resistance (and hence their memory state) in a nonvolatile manner, are beginning to be implemented in integrated circuits for memory applications. However, memristive devices could have applications in many other technologies, such as non–von Neumann in-memory computing in crossbar arrays, random number generation for data security, and radio-frequency switches for mobile communications. Progress toward the integration of memristive devices in commercial solid-state electronic circuits and other potential applications will depend on performance and reliability challenges that still need to be addressed, as described here.