Lv Hangbing, Xu Xiaoxin, Liu Hongtao, Liu Ruoyu, Liu Qi, Banerjee Writam, Sun Haitao, Long Shibing, Li Ling, Liu Ming
Lab of Nano-fabrication and Novel Devices Integration, Institute of Microelectronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China.
Sci Rep. 2015 Jan 14;5:7764. doi: 10.1038/srep07764.
The electrochemical metallization cell, also referred to as conductive bridge random access memory, is considered to be a promising candidate or complementary component to the traditional charge based memory. As such, it is receiving additional focus to accelerate the commercialization process. To create a successful mass product, reliability issues must first be rigorously solved. In-depth understanding of the failure behavior of the ECM is essential for performance optimization. Here, we reveal the degradation of high resistance state behaves as the majority cases of the endurance failure of the HfO2 electrolyte based ECM cell. High resolution transmission electron microscopy was used to characterize the change in filament nature after repetitive switching cycles. The result showed that Cu accumulation inside the filament played a dominant role in switching failure, which was further supported by measuring the retention of cycle dependent high resistance state and low resistance state. The clarified physical picture of filament evolution provides a basic understanding of the mechanisms of endurance and retention failure, and the relationship between them. Based on these results, applicable approaches for performance optimization can be implicatively developed, ranging from material tailoring to structure engineering and algorithm design.
电化学金属化单元，也被称为导电桥随机存取存储器，被认为是传统基于电荷的存储器的一个有前途的候选者或互补组件。因此，它正受到更多关注以加速商业化进程。要打造一个成功的量产产品，必须首先严格解决可靠性问题。深入了解电化学金属化单元的失效行为对于性能优化至关重要。在此，我们揭示高电阻状态的退化是基于HfO₂电解质的电化学金属化单元耐久性失效的大多数情况。使用高分辨率透射电子显微镜来表征重复开关循环后细丝性质的变化。结果表明，细丝内的铜积累在开关失效中起主导作用，通过测量循环相关的高电阻状态和低电阻状态的保持情况进一步证实了这一点。阐明的细丝演变物理图景为耐久性和保持失效的机制以及它们之间的关系提供了基本理解。基于这些结果，可以含蓄地开发从材料定制到结构工程和算法设计等适用的性能优化方法。
