(Invited) Stress-Induced Asymmetric Switching and Filament Instability in Electrochemical Memories

Abstract

Resistive switching memory based on electrochemical reaction are receiving a great interest as a future technology for nonvolatile storage class memories with fast programming and low power operation. To achieve scalable and reliable electrochemical memories, the switching and stability mechanisms must be carefully understood. This work shows that the switching characteristics of electrochemical memory devices display a strong asymmetric behavior, which is attributed to the mechanical stress around the conductive filament (CF) in the set state. CF instability after pulsed set is also evidenced and explained in terms of the compressive stress. Stress relaxation is shown to significantly stabilize ECM, thus providing new guidelines to improve memory stability at low set/reset power.