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The gap between academia and industry in resistive switching research

Nature Electronics volume 6, pages 260–263 (2023)Cite this article

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While academic research into resistive switching materials continues to grow, Intel recently shut down its resistive switching memory manufacturing plant. What does this mean for the future of nanoelectronic technologies based on resistive switching devices?

The first reproducible and consistent observations of non-volatile resistive switching took place in the early 1960s with arsenic telluride alloys, a family of materials that change their phase — and thus their resistance — when electrical stresses of different polarities are applied1. In the early 2000s, resistive switching devices made with phase-change materials, metal oxides and magnetic materials started to become popular for data storage. Subsequently, commercial standalone memories were created by Panasonic, Adesto, Fujitsu and Intel, although their capabilities were limited to a few megabits2.

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Fig. 1: The memory hierarchy and the role of resistive switching memories.
Fig. 2: Test structures commonly used in academia and industry.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank S. Bertolazzi from Yole Development and S. Pazos from the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology for useful discussions, as well as W. Lu from the University of Michigan for providing an early version of Fig. 1b.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science and Engineering Program, Physical Science and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

    Mario Lanza

  2. Weebit Nano Ltd, Hod Hasharon, Israel

    Gabriel Molas & Ishai Naveh

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  1. Mario Lanza
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  2. Gabriel Molas
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Correspondence to Mario Lanza.

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Competing interests

G.M. and I.N. are employees of Weebit Nano, which is looking to commercialize resistive switching devices based on metal oxides.

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Lanza, M., Molas, G. & Naveh, I. The gap between academia and industry in resistive switching research. Nat Electron 6, 260–263 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-023-00954-8

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