This article reviews current and future techniques that are applied in the meat industry to ensure product safety. Consumer demand for high-quality food and raised economic standards have triggered the development of emergent technologies to replace traditional well-established preservation processes. Some promising nonthermal and thermal technologies, such as chemical and biological interventions, high hydrostatic pressure (HHP), irradiation, active packaging, natural antimicrobials and microwave, radiofrequency, and steam pasteurization, are under consideration for the preservation of meat products. All these alternative technologies are designed to be mild, energy-conserving, environmentally friendly, and maintaining natural appearance and flavor, while eliminating pathogens and spoilage microorganisms. Their combination, as in the hurdle theory, may improve their effectiveness for decontamination. The objective of this article is to reflect on the possibilities and especially the limitations of the previously mentioned technologies.

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We report on the unipolar resistive switching (RS) phenomenon in yttrium oxide (Y 2 O 3 ) metal-insulator-metal structures. The RS behavior for Y 2 O 3 shows a superior ON/OFF resistance ratio of greater than 10 6 and good memory retention reliability performance of at least 10 6 seconds at room temperature. By adding a thin yttrium (Y) layer to form a Y-Y 2 O 3 bilayer structure, a reduction in the RESET current by two orders of magnitude is achieved, which is advantageous in reducing the total switching energy consumption for resistive random access memory application.The resistive switching (RS) behavior in metal chalcogenides, metal oxides and some organic compounds has been extensively investigated for potential application in the next-generation non-volatile memory devices. Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain the RS phenomenon. Since the active area in such devices is always buried under a top electrode, visualization and analysis of the conductive path are rarely carried out. Hence, obtaining physical evidence of the actual switching mechanism still remains difficult. Nevertheless, a few mechanisms that are more widely accepted have been proposed to explain the memory resistive (memristive) switching phenomenon. These mechanisms include the reduction of migrating metal cations at the cathode resulting in the formation of a metal filament, 1, 2 and the drift of positively-charged oxygen vacancies to form or disperse local conductive channels through the metal/oxide electronic barrier. 1-3 In transition metal oxides, thermal effects inducing the formation and disruption of the conductive filament is another plausible mechanism for the fuse-antifuse type of switching. 2,4,5 In this letter, we report on the unipolar RS behavior in yttrium oxide (Y 2 O 3 ) metal-insulator-metal (MIM) structures. Although bipolar RS has been reported previously for Y 2 O 3 , unipolar RS will be demonstrated for Y 2 O 3 in this work. We found that the reduction in RESET current (I RESET ) in the Y 2 O 3 MIM structure could be achieved by adding a thin yttrium metal (Y) interlayer to form a Y-Y 2 O 3 bilayer structure. This bilayer structure could therefore provide a new direction for resistive random access memory (RRAM) application with reduced energy consumption.In the MIM structure, the bottom electrode of aluminum (Al) was thermally evaporated on the silicon dioxide/silicon (SiO 2 /Si) substrate. If platinum (Pt) is required as the bottom electrode, commercially available Pt/Ti/SiO 2 /Si substrates were used. A 40-nm thick Y 2 O 3 thin film was then deposited by sputtering using the Anelva L3325FH multi-target sputtering machine. Prior to the Y 2 O 3 deposition, the sputtering chamber was pumped down to a base pressure of 10 −6 Torr. Sputtering was carried out when the chamber pressure had stabilized at 0.3 kPa (∼2.25 Torr). For the bilayer structure, a 10-nm thick Y layer was sputtered onto the bottom electrode before depositing the 40-nm thick Y 2 O 3 thin film; all these operations were performed without break...

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