Stability and its mechanism in Ag/CoOx/Ag interface-type resistive switching device

Stability is an important issue for the application of resistive switching (RS) devices. In this work, the endurance and retention properties of Ag/CoOx/Ag interface-type RS device were investigated. This device exhibits rectifying I–V curve, multilevel storage states and retention decay behavior, which are all related to the Schottky barrier at the interface. The device can switch for thousands of cycles without endurance failure and shows narrow resistance distributions with relatively low fluctuation. However, both the high and low resistance states spontaneously decay to an intermediate resistance state during the retention test. This retention decay phenomenon is due to the short lifetime τ (τ = 0.5 s) of the metastable pinning effect caused by the interface states. The data analysis indicated that the pinning effect is dependent on the depth and density of the interface state energy levels, which determine the retention stability and the switching ratio, respectively. This suggests that an appropriate interface structure can improve the stability of the interface-type RS device