Anisotropic Magnetoresistance of Nano-conductive Filament in Co/HfO2/Pt Resistive Switching Memory

Conductive bridge random access memory (CBRAM) has been extensively studied as a next-generation non-volatile memory. The conductive filament (CF) shows rich physical effects such as conductance quantization and magnetic effect. But so far, the study of filaments is not very sufficient. In this work, Co/HfO2/Pt CBRAM device with magnetic CF was designed and fabricated. By electrical manipulation with a partial-RESET method, we controlled the size of ferromagnetic metal filament. The resistance-temperature characteristics of the ON-state after various partial-RESET behaviors have been studied. Using two kinds of magnetic measurement methods, we measured the anisotropic magnetoresistance (AMR) of the CF at different temperatures to reflect the magnetic structure characteristics. By rotating the direction of the magnetic field and by sweeping the magnitude, we obtained the spatial direction as well as the easy-axis of the CF. The results indicate that the easy-axis of the CF is along the direction perpendicular to the top electrode plane. The maximum magnetoresistance was found to appear when the angle between the direction of magnetic field and that of the electric current in the CF is about 30 degrees, and this angle varies slightly with temperature, indicating that the current is tilted.