The Effect of Silicon Oxide Based RRAM with Tin Doping

Abstract

Traditionally, a large number of silicon oxide materials are extensively used as various dielectrics for semiconductor industries. But silicon oxide cannot be used as resistance random access memory (RRAM) due to its native electrical properties. In this work, based on the concept of inducing defect by metal doping into insulator, silicon oxide with a few tin dopants at room temperature can successfully be used as switching layer in RRAM. According to electrical analyses, the current transport mechanism in Sn-doped silicon oxide is governed by Pool-Frenkel emission, which demonstrates the conduction path in the RRAM guided by Sn doping induced defect.Recently, the increasing demands for portable electronic products, nonvolatile memory has been widely applied as information storage device due to its low power consumption properties. Modern semiconductor nonvolatile memories are scaled constantly to achieve large capacity while device features approach the sub-100-nm regime. Nevertheless, for conventional charge storage-based memories, 1-4 the increasing demand for device densities by scaling dimension is expected to be a major challenge due to the technical and physical limitation. To overcome the issue, alternative memory technologies have been widely investigated, including a magnetic random access memory (MRAM), a phase change random access memory (PCRAM), a polymer random access memory (PRAM), and a resistive random access memory (RRAM). Among these memories, RRAM composed of an insulating layer sandwiched by two electrodes is a great potential candidate for next-generation nonvolatile memory due to their superior properties such as low cost, simple structure, fast operation speed, and nondestructive readout. 5,6 Various materials have been reported to possess resistive switching behaviors, such as perovskite oxides (PrCaMnO 3 , SrZrO 3 ), 7, 8 transition metal oxides (NiO, ZnO, CrO, CoO), 9-12 and organic material. 13 In addition, many switching mechanism of RRAM have been proposed to explain resistive switching phenomenon, such as conductive filaments, 14 valence change, 15 and schottky barrier. 16 However, the underlying mechanism of resistive switching behavior is still not yet understood clearly. Silicon-based oxide is a promising material for RRAM applications because of its great compatibility in metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process. Therefore, the research using silicon-based oxide as the resistance-switching layer was worthy of investigation. Kozicki et al. 17 have studied the resistive switching characteristics of Cu/SiO 2 /W structure. They utilized high temperature treatment at 610 • C to drive Cu into SiO 2 to form filament and to result in resistive switching behavior. However, the high driving temperature is not suitable to the backend of line (BEOL) process for CMOS integration technology.In this work, tin metal doped into silicon oxide by co-sputtering at room temperature was taken as the resistance switching layer of RRAM. To evaluate the resistive switching properties of tin-doped silico...

Effects of oxygen doping concentration on resistive switching in NiN-based resistive switching memory

“…4 For the 1 sccm sample, the conducting behavior had a unified slope in the low-voltage region (<0.8 V); however, in the higher-voltage region (>0.8 V), the behavior demonstrated Poole-Frenkel emission, which matches the defect-related current. 10 This is shown in the inset of Fig. 4(a).…”

Improved resistive switching phenomena observed in SiNx‐based resistive switching memory through oxygen doping process

“…Resistive random access memory (ReRAM) using various metal oxide films has attracted considerable attention as next‐generation nonvolatile memory (NVM) because of low power consumption, integration of high density, high operating speed, and compatibility with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) process 1, 2. On the other hand, comparing with the metal oxide based resistive switching materials, metal nitride films are known to have many excellent features for ReRAM application, such as a high thermal conductivity, good insulating properties and a high dielectric constant 3.…”

Mechanism of power consumption inhibitive multi-layer Zn:SiO2/SiO2 structure resistance random access memory

“…And it can be modified by adjusting the thickness of switching layer, types of dopants, ways of electrical operation, etc. [30][31][32][33] In this paper, multi-layer stacking technology is applied to modify the filament formation process.…”