Role of Anode on Resistance Switching Phenomenon of Metal Oxide Resistive Random Access Memory

Abstract

ABSTRACTAlthough the presence of oxygen reservoir is assumed in many theoretical models which explain resistive switching of ReRAM with an electrode/metal oxide (MO)/electrode structure, the location of oxygen reservoir is not clear. We have previously reported a method for preparing an extremely small ReRAM cell which has removable bottom electrode (BE), by using AFM cantilever. In this study, we used this cell structure to specify the location of oxygen reservoir. Since an anode is assumed to work as an oxygen reservoir in most models, we investigated the effect of changing anodes for the same filament on the presence or absence of the occurrence of reset switching. It was revealed that reset occurred independently of catalytic ability and Gibbs free energy (ΔG) of anode material. However, reset was caused by repairing oxygen vacancies of which filament consists when metals with high ΔG is used as an anode, whereas by oxidizing an anode when metals with low ΔG is used as an anode. This result suggests that the MO film works as an oxygen reservoir for anode with high ΔG, whereas an anode works as an oxygen reservoir for anode with low ΔG.