The origin of hysteresis in resistive switching in magnetite is Joule heating

Abstract

In many transition metal oxides the electrical resistance is observed to undergo dramatic changes induced by large biases. In magnetite, Fe${}_3$O${}_4$, below the Verwey temperature, an electric field driven transition to a state of lower resistance was recently found, with hysteretic current-voltage response. We report the results of pulsed electrical conduction measurements in epitaxial magnetite thin films. We show that while the high- to low-resistance transition is driven by electric field, the hysteresis observed in $I-V$ curves results from Joule heating in the low resistance state. The shape of the hysteresis loop depends on pulse parameters, and reduces to a hysteresis-free "jump" of the current provided thermal relaxation is rapid compared to the time between voltage pulses. A simple relaxation time thermal model is proposed that captures the essentials of the hysteresis mechanism.

7 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Electrically-driven phase transition in magnetite nanostructures
• Jumps in current-voltage characteristics in disordered films
• Nanogaps with very large aspect ratios for electrical measurements
• Field-induced metal-insulator transition and switching phenomenon in correlated insulators
• Nonlinear current-voltage behavior and electrically driven phase transition in charge frustrated LuFe2O4

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Verwey transition in single magnetite nanoparticles
• Role of local temperature in the current-driven metal-insulator transition of Ca2RuO4
• Modelling of Current Percolation Channels in Emerging Resistive Switching Elements
• Nanostructure Investigations of Nonlinear Differential Conductance in NdNiO${}_3$ Thin Films
• Mott resistive switching initiated by topological defects
• Electric-field-driven resistive transition in multiferroic SrCo${}_2$Fe${}_{16}$O${}_{27}$/Sr${}_3$Co${}_2$Fe${}_{24}$O${}_{41}$composite
• Spatio-temporal dynamics of voltage-induced resistance transition in the double-exchange model
• Nonequilibrium thermal state of a voltage-biased Mott insulator