Effects of oxygen vacancy concentration and temperature on memristive behavior of SrRuO3/Nb:SrTiO3 junctions*

Abstract

Metal/semiconductor memristive heterostructures have potential applications in nonvolatile memory and computing devices. To enhance the performance of the memristive devices, it requires a comprehensive engineering to the metal/semiconductor interfaces. Here in this paper, we discuss the effects of oxygen vacancies and temperature on the memristive behaviors of perovskite-oxide Schottky junctions, each consisting of SrRuO3 thin films epitaxially grown on Nb:SrTiO3 substrates. The oxygen partial pressure and laser fluence are controlled during the film growth to tune the oxygen defects in SrRuO3 films, and the Schottky barrier height can be controlled by both the temperature and oxygen vacancies. The resistive switching measurements demonstrate that the largest resistance switching ratio can be obtained by controlling oxygen vacancy concentration at lower temperature. It suggests that reducing Schottky barrier height can enhance the resistive switching performance of the SrRuO3/Nb:SrTiO3 heterostructures. This work can conduce to the development of high-performance metal-oxide/semiconductor memristive devices.