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An electronic silicon-based memristor with a high switching uniformity

Nature Electronics volume 2, pages 66–74 (2019)Cite this article

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Abstract

Metal–insulator–metal devices known as memristors offer voltage-regulated nanoscale conductivity and are of interest in the development of non-volatile random access memory. Typically, however, their tunable conductivity is the result of migrating ions within a stochastically formed filament, and as such their combined resistor–memory performance suffers. Here we show that amorphous silicon compositions, which are doped with oxygen or nitrogen and sandwiched between metal electrodes, can be used to create purely electronic memristors. The devices have coherent electron wave functions that extend to the full device thickness (more than 15 nm) and, despite the thinness and very high aspect ratio of the devices, electrons still follow an isotropic, three-dimensional pathway, thus providing uniform conductivity at the nanoscale. Such pathways in amorphous insulators are derived from overlapping gap states and regulated by trapped charge, which is stabilized by electron–lattice interaction. As a result, the nanometallic memristors also exhibit pressure-triggered insulator-to-metal transitions. Our silicon-based memristors, which could be readily integrated into silicon technology, are purely electronic and offer switching capabilities that are fast, uniform, durable, multi-state and low power.

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Fig. 1: Silicon memristor as a non-filamentary distinctively electronic two-terminal device.
Fig. 2: Constant-voltage switching of a silicon memristor.
Fig. 3: Size-dependent localization transitions in amorphous SiOx nanofilms.
Fig. 4: Thickness-dependent saturation of QCC.

Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the US National Science Foundation Grant No. DMR-1409114 and used the facilities at NHMFL (DMR-1157490, State of Florida) and at FACET (SLAC National Laboratory supported by the US Department of Energy), where the experimental assistance of Drs J.-H. Park (NHMFL), H.-W. Baek (NHMFL) and I. Tudosa (FACET) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Yang Lu, Ana Alvarez & I-Wei Chen

  2. Integrated Service Technology, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    Chung-Ho Kao & Jong-Shing Bow

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu, Taiwan

    San-Yuan Chen

Authors
  1. Yang Lu
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  2. Ana Alvarez
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  4. Jong-Shing Bow
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Contributions

Y.L. and I.-W.C. conceived the idea and formulated the research plan. All experiments except Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (performed and analysed by A.A.) and transmission electron microscopy (provided and analysed by C.-H.K., J.-S.B. and S.-Y.C.) were performed and analysed by Y.L. The manuscript was written by Y.L. and I.-W.C. with comments from all coauthors.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to I-Wei Chen.

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Competing interest

Y.L., I.-W.C. and University of Pennsylvania have filed for applications on silicon-based and related thin-film memory devices.

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Supplementary Figures 1–14 and Supplementary Table 1

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Lu, Y., Alvarez, A., Kao, CH. et al. An electronic silicon-based memristor with a high switching uniformity. Nat Electron 2, 66–74 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-019-0204-7

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