Interfacial Electrode-Driven Enhancement of the Switching Parameters of a Copper Oxide-Based Resistive Random-Access Memory Device

The characteristics of an Au/Cu (x) O/Au bipolar resistive random-access memory device are reported. It is demonstrated that switching parameters of this device structure can be enhanced by introducing an interfacial Al layer between the Au top electrode and the Cu (x) O-based dielectric layer. The set and reset voltages are, respectively, between -2.5 V to -6.0 V and +1.2 V to +3.0 V for the Al-based device. In contrast, the range of values are -0.5 V to -2.5 V and +0.5 V to +1.5 V for the set and reset voltages in the absence of Al. The Al-based device has a higher low resistance state value of 5-6 Ka"broken vertical bar as compared to the 0.3-0.5 Ka"broken vertical bar for the Au-based device, which leads to a 12 times lower power dissipation factor and lower reset current of 370 mu A. Endurance studies carried out over 50 switching cycles show less than 2% variation in both the low resistance and high resistance values. The conduction is ohmic at low values of bias and non-ohmic at higher bias voltage which shows that the enhanced behaviour is a result of the formation of an insulating aluminum oxide layer at the Al-Cu (x) O interface.