Variability Assessment and Mitigation by Predictive Programming in Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 Based RRAM

Filamentary resistive switching based RRAM (e.g. HfO2) depends on soft breakdown mechanism which is fundamentally stochastic and hence prone to variability. In comparison, manganites based non-filamentary resistive switching is explored from a variability perspective. We demonstrate excellent within device (WID) variability reduction in resistance levels (11x for HRS and >10x for LRS) compared to HfO2 RRAM. DC sweep based device to device (DTD) variability in a 6 level programming process is measured to show large but partially systematic variations. We propose a predictive programming scheme to take advantage of the partially systematic nature of PCMO variability to demonstrate resistance level distributions with >1.5x improvement in variability compared to conventional programming. The PCMO DTD variability for HRS is also 2-4x lower than the WID HfO2 variability.