Scaling Effect on Unipolar and Bipolar Resistive Switching of Metal Oxides

Abstract

Electrically driven resistance change in metal oxides opens up an interdisciplinary research field for next-generation non-volatile memory. Resistive switching exhibits an electrical polarity dependent “bipolar-switching” and a polarity independent “unipolar-switching”, however tailoring the electrical polarity has been a challenging issue. Here we demonstrate a scaling effect on the emergence of the electrical polarity by examining the resistive switching behaviors of Pt/oxide/Pt junctions over 8 orders of magnitudes in the areas. We show that the emergence of two electrical polarities can be categorised as a diagram of an electric field and a cell area. This trend is qualitatively common for various oxides including NiOx, CoOx, and TiO2-x. We reveal the intrinsic difference between unipolar switching and bipolar switching on the area dependence, which causes a diversity of an electrical polarity for various resistive switching devices with different geometries. This will provide a foundation for tailoring resistive switching behaviors of metal oxides.

All-nanocellulose nonvolatile resistive memory

“…This is a so-called forming process that is used to initialize the resistive memory device. [32][33][34][35] After the forming process, the device showed a low-resistance state (LRS), with a resistance of 63 Ω (red line). The LRS was maintained until the negative voltage was applied.…”

Compliance current dependence of conversion between bipolar, unipolar, and threshold resistance switching in Mn3O4 films

“…Besides, there is another type of resistance switching: threshold switching, which is featured to show volatile transition from HRS to LRS at a certain voltage and transition back to HRS at a lower voltage. [13][14][15] The voltage-dependent volatile threshold switching can be used for selection device (selector) controlling the access to each memory element. 7 Once the selector is integrated with memory element in the passive crossbar arrays, crosstalk issue resulted from the parasitic sneak current paths around the neighboring crossbar cells could be avoided.…”

Nonvolatile conductive filaments resistive switching behaviors in Ag/GaO x /Nb:SrTiO3/Ag structure

“…Resistive random access memory (RRAM), as the potential next generation for nonvolatile memory, has been intensively studied during the past decades, mainly due to its outstanding features, such as high operation speed, low power consumption, high scalability, excellent endurance, and multi-state memory [1][2][3][4].…”