FePt Metallic Nanoparticle Dispersion-Induced Evolution of Resistive Switching Performance in SiO2-Based RRAM Devices

In order to improve the resistive switching performance of SiO2-based resistance random access memory (RRAM) devices, the evolution from pure oxide-based devices to metallic nanoparticle dispersed oxide-based devices is investigated in this paper. It is found that a high ratio of dispersed-oxide/pure-oxide and thin SiO2 film can increase the uniformity and endurance of RRAM devices. Pure TiN/SiO2/Au RRAM devices show large distributions and poor endurance for repeated resistive switching process, while the TiN/SiO2:FePt/SiO2/Au RRAM devices exhibit higher uniformity and better endurance. Moreover, the fluctuations and degradation of high-resistance state and low-resistance state are observed in the former devices; by increasing the ratio of dispersed-oxide/pure-oxide in TiN/SiO2/SiO2:FePt/SiO2/Au, high consistency resistive switching is obtained. It is believed that the random formation of conducting filaments (CFs) causes poor performance of RRAM devices, and with a higher ratio of dispersed-oxide/pure-oxide the morphology of CFs is controlled due to the local field enhancement. The results in this paper may provide a method of fabricating high-performance RRAM devices for industry application.