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Nobel metal/TiO2 structures are used as catalysts in chemical reactors, active components in TiO2-based electronic devices, and connections between such devices and the outside circuitry. Here, we investigate the energy barrier at the junctions between vacuum-deposited Ag, Au, and Pt thin films and TiO2 layers by recording their electrical current vs. voltage diagrams and spectra of optical responses. Deposited Au/, Pt/, and Ag/TiO2 behave like contacts with zero junction energy barriers, but the thermal annealing of the reverse-biased devices for an hour at 523 K in air converts them to Schottky diodes with high junction energy barriers, decreasing their reverse electric currents up to 106 times. Similar thermal processing in vacuum or pure argon proved ineffective. The highest energy barrier and the lowest reverse current among the devices examined belong to the annealed Ag/TiO2 contacts. The observed electronic features are described based on the physicochemical parameters of the constituting materials. The formation of higher junction barriers with rutile than with anatase is demonstrated.

Recent intensive investigations on metal/metal oxide/metal structures have targeted nanometric single grain oxides at high electric fields. Similar research on thicker polycrystalline oxide layers can bridge the results to the prior literature on varistors and may uncover novel ionic/electronic features originating from the conduction mechanisms involving grain boundaries. Here, we investigate electronic conduction in Ti/poly-TiO2−x/Ti structures with different oxygen vacancy distributions and describe the observed features based on the motion and rearrangement of the ionized oxygen vacancies (IOVs) on the grain facets rather than the grain interiors. Containing no interface energy barrier, Ti/poly-TiO2/Ti devices demonstrate high resistance ohmic conduction at biasing fields below 5 × 106 V.m−1; higher fields drive the samples to a distinctly nonlinear and hysteretic low resistance status. The observed threshold is two orders of magnitude smaller than the typical resistance switching fields reported for the nanosized single grain memristors. This is consistent with the smaller activation energies reported for the IOV motion on the rutile facets than its interior. The presented model describes the observed dependence of the threshold field on the relative humidity of the surrounding air based on the lower activation energies reported for the hydroxyl-assisted IOV motion on the rutile facets.

In this paper, a compact optical high-speed 1-bit comparator is proposed based on photonic crystals. In this structure, the nonlinear rods are used at the cross-connecting point of two optical waveguides. The optical transmission and reflection from these rods depend on the amount of the optical intensity. In response to the different states of the input ports, different values of the optical power reach these rods and the interference patterns make the correct function of the output ports. The refractive index and the Kerr coefficient of nonlinear rods are 1.4 m 2 / W and 10 − 14 m 2 / W , respectively. The footprint of the structure is 55 µ m 2 , which is much smaller than the previous works. Besides, the lower delay time is the other advantage of this work compared with the previous works. Based on the simulation results, the proposed structure can be used in integrated optical circuits.

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