Effect of electrode and oxide properties on the filament kinetics during electroforming in metal-oxide-based memories

• DOI: 10.1038/s41524-022-00770-2
• Publication Date: 2022-04-21T10:03:06Z
• Authors: Kena Zhang; Yao Ren; Panchapakesan Ganesh; Ye Cao
• Keywords: Electroforming; Non-blocking I/O

Abstract We developed a physical model to fundamentally understand the conductive filament (CF) formation and growth behavior in switching layer during electroforming process metal-oxide-based resistive random-access memories (RRAM). The effects of electrode oxide properties on CF morphology evolution, current-voltage characteristic, local temperature, electrical potential distribution have been systematically explored. It is found that choosing active electrodes with lower oxygen vacancy energy oxides small Lorenz number (ratio thermal conductivity) enables at smaller voltage creates more homogeneous morphology. This work advances our understanding kinetic behaviors could potentially guide materials selection realize stable functional RRAM.