nanoelectronic devices with the effect of resistive switching, which consists in a reversible change of resistance in response to electrical stimulation [5] and is identified with the memristive effect. [6] Despite the significant progress in understanding of the memristive effect and approaching maturity of the technology of resistiveswitching devices over the last 10 years, there are still a number of fundamental problems to solve.A key problem on the way of using resistive-switching devices as programmable elements in memory devices and mixed analog-digital processors of new generation is the variability of resistive switching parameters inherent to memristive thin-film devices. [7] Achieving stable switching between the nonlinear resistive states is also an important task on the way to implementing large passive crossbar arrays of memristors and solving the problem of leakage currents in them. [8,9] Metal-oxide memristive devices are most compatible with the traditional complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and exhibit a valence change memory effect. [10] The variation of switching parameters in such devices is caused by the stochastic nature of migration of oxygen ions and/or vacancies responsible for the local oxidation and recovery of conductive channels (filaments) and is accompanied by the degradation of switching parameters in the case of uncontrolled oxygen exchange between the dielectric and electrode materials.The traditional approaches to control the reproducibility of resistive switching include the formation of special electric field concentrators [11][12][13] and appropriate selection of materials/interfaces in memristive device structure. In the latter case, bilayer or multilayer structures are formed, in which the switching oxide alternates with a barrier/buffer layer (layers) to control the migration of oxygen vacancies, [14,15] with a layer of low dielectric constant [16,17] to obtain nonlinear currentvoltage (I-V) characteristics, or with a layer of higher/lower thermal conductivity [18,19] for the removal/retention of heat in the switching area and to achieve analog switching character. To tune the resistive states with given accuracy, regardless of

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Research and development efforts in the nonvolatile memory arena are focused on a reduced set of innovative components, among which we can include memristors. [1,2] Memristors are expected to be key players in the electronics landscape of the coming years largely because of the powerful applications that stand upon their unique features. [1,[3][4][5] The switching mechanisms behind memristors differ significantly depending on the physical properties of the structures and the materials involved. [1,[3][4][5][6][7] To list some of these mechanisms, we can highlight those devices based on phase-change materials, which can be switched reversibly between amorphous and crystalline phases with different electrical resistivity (phasechange memories, PCMs); [8] devices that take advantage of the magnetic and electrical properties exhibited by some materials with different architectures (magnetic RAMs, MRAMs); [9] also structures where materials with switchable electrical polarization give rise to hysteresis curves of the polarization versus electrical field that can be engineered for storing information (ferroelectric FET, FFET); [10] and, finally, resistive RAMs (RRAMs) where the dielectric conduction properties are altered by means of the internal ion movement and concurrent redox reactions used to generate different resistive states. [1,3,11,12]

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We report the investigations of the ion migration polarization in the yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) thin films in the Metal-Oxide-Metal (MOM) and Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) stacks due to the drift of the oxygen vacancies under the external bias voltage applied between the electrodes. The parameters characterizing the drift of the oxygen vacancies in YSZ such as the ion drift activation energy, mobile ion concentration, and the drift mobility have been determined in the temperature range 300–500 K. These data are important for deeper understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of the electroforming and resistive switching in the YSZ-based MOM and MOS stacks, which are promising for the Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) and other memristor device applications.