From stochastic single atomic switch to nanoscale resistive memory device

Abstract

Solid state ionic conductors are good candidates for the next generation of nonvolatile computer memory elements. Such devices have to show reproducible resistance switching at reasonable voltage and current values even if scaled down to the nanometer sizes. Here we study the switching characteristics of nanoscale junctions created between a tungsten tip and a silver film covered by a thin ionic conductor layer. Atomic-sized junctions show spectacular current induced switching characteristics, but both the magnitude of the switching voltage and the direction of the switching vary randomly for different junctions. In contrast, for somewhat larger junctions with diameters of a few nanometers a well defined, reproducible switching behavior is observed which is associated with the formation and destruction of nanoscale channels in the ionic conductor surface layer. Our results define a low size limit of 3 nm for reliable ionic nano-switches, which is well below the resolution of recent lithographic techniques.

References in corpus (2)

• Quantum properties of atomic-sized conductors
• Towards a Quantitative Description of Solid Electrolyte Conductance Switches

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Observing "Quantized" Conductance Steps in Silver Sulfide: Two Parallel Resistive Switching Mechanisms
• Asymmetry-induced resistive switching in Ag-Ag${}_2$S-Ag memristors enabling a simplified atomic-scale memory design
• Bulk and Surface Nucleation Processes in Ag2S Conductance Switches
• GHz Operation of Nanometer-Scale Metallic Memristors: Highly Transparent Conductance Channels in Ag${}_2$S Devices
• Temporal correlations and structural memory effects in break junction measurements
• Minimum entropy production effect on a quantum scale