Electroforming process in metal-oxide-polymer resistive switching memories

• Author(s): Chen, Q. ; Gomes, Henrique L. ; Kiazadeh, A. ; Rocha, P. R. F. ; De Leeuw, Dago M. ; Meskers, S. C. J.
• Date: 2012
• Persistent ID: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.1/3297
• Origin: Sapientia - Universidade do Algarve
• Subject(s): Resistive random access memory (RRAM),; Electroforming soft-breakdown; Non-volatile memory
• Document Type: Part of book or chapter of book
• Language: English

Description

Electroforming of an Al/Al2O3/polymer/Al esistive switching diode is reported. Electroforming is a dielectric soft-breakdown mechanism leading to hysteretic current–voltage characteristics and non–volatile memory behavior. Electron trapping occurs at early stages of electroforming. Trapping is physically located at the oxide/polymer interface. The detrapping kinetics is faster under reverse bias and for thicker oxides layers. Thermally detrapping experiments give a trap depth of 0.65 eV and a density of 5x1017 /cm2. It is proposed that the trapped electrons induce a dipole layer across the oxide. The associated electric field triggers breakdown and ultimately dictate the overall memory characteristics.