Development of amorphous SiC based resistive memories

Abstract

As Flash memory is approaching physical scaling limit, there is great interest in the research of the next generation non-volatile memory. In addition to replacing Flash memory in data storage applications, the next generation non-volatile memory is also expected to have improved performance, especially more cycle endurance and faster read/write operation, so that it may eventually be the “universal" memory. Resistive memory (RM) is widely considered to be the overall most promising emerging non-volatile memory. This project focused RMs based on Cu and amorphous silicon carbide (a-SiC) following the recent reports of excellent retention and stabilities of such RMs, which was attributed to the advantageously low Cu diffusion rate in SiC. Material properties, namely chemical composition, structural properties and electrical conduction properties of the sputtering deposited a-SiC and a-SiC/Cu solid electrolytes were firstly analysed in this project. This project has then developed Cu/a-SiC RMs with via-stack and crossbar structures, with a-SiC and a-SiC/Cu as solid electrolytes and Au, W and TiN as counter electrodes. The switching characteristics of the obtained devices have then been thoroughly investigated. All devices based on Cu and a-SiC with different structure and material configurations have shown repeated resistive switching behaviour, with each batch showing certain unique features in their switching behaviour. Nonpolar resistive switching was observed in the Cu/a-SiC/Au and Cu/a-SiC:Cu/Au via-stack devices, while coexistence of bipolar and unipolar switching was observed in RMs with TiN and W counter electrodes. Our devices also exhibited significantly improved ON/OFF current ratio and great state retention performance. Furthermore, the switching mechanisms and conduction mechanism of these RMs were analysed based on their I-V characteristics. These results suggest promising application potentials for RMs based on Cu and a-SiC.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Liudi Jiang: orcid.org/0000-0002-3400-825X

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