Bipolar resistive switching of chromium oxide for resistive random access memory

Abstract

This study investigates the resistance switching characteristics of Cr(2)O(3)-based resistance random access memory (RRAM) with Pt/Cr(2)O(3)/TiN and Pt/Cr(2)O(3)/Pt structures. Only devices with Pt/Cr(2)O(3)/TiN structure exhibit bipolar switching behavior after the forming process because TiN was able to work as an effective oxygen reservoir but Pt was not. Oxygen migration between Cr(2)O(3) and TiN was observed clearly before and after resistance switching from Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) analysis. Both low resistance state, ON state, and high resistance state, OFF state, of Pt/Cr(2)O(3)/TiN structures are stable and reproducible during a successive resistive switching. The resistance ratio of ON and OFF state is over 10(2), on top of that, the retention properties of both states are very stable after 10(4) s with a voltage of -0.2 V. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.