Conducting mechanism of Ag-diffused Bi-Te based resistive switching devices

The forming-free resistive switching (RS) and conducting mechanism of Ag-diffused BiTe chalcogenide thin film has been investigated. The mutual diffusion of Ag, Bi and Te elements at the interface is proved to suppress the crystallization of the as-deposited BiTe film. The amorphization of BiTe and the Schottky barrier between Ag and BiTe contribute to high resistance state (HRS) of the switching devices. When switched to low resistance state (LRS), the coexistence of metallic conduction and variable-range hopping is found to be the dominant conduction mechanism. The temperature dependence of LRS exhibits an interesting transport behavior, so that a positive temperature coefficient becomes a negative one at 24 K. Our results help to further understand the conduction mechanism and promote the design for future nonvolatile memory applications.