Resistive Switching in Copper Oxide Nanowire-based Memristor

A copper oxide nanowire (CuO NW) based memristor is designed for the non-volatile random access memories (NVRAM) and the resistive memory effect based transducers. The devices are prototyped using a copper oxide and cuprous oxide (CuO-Cu2O) hetero-junction formed from as-grown CuO NWs. We report an experimental investigation of using electron beam irradiation in fabricating such devices. Experiments have been performed using nanorobotic manipulation inside a transmission electron microscope. Because the memristor is conducted as a dynamical resistor, the bipolar resistive switching (BRS) behaviors of the as-fabricated device demonstrated typical ones of memristors. Furthermore, the as-fabricated nanowire memristor is sensitive to the electron bombardment. The irradiation ratio of NWs and the memristor effect are co-related, which is promising for the application in a transducer. The CuO NW based memristor will enrich the binary transition oxide family and holds a simpler design than the traditional thin-film version. Owing to these advantages, the CuO nanowire based memristors will facilitate their applications in nanoelectronic and potentially in micro-/nano- electromechanical systems (MEMS/NEMS).