High-Performance Single-Active-Layer Memristor Based on an Ultrananocrystalline Oxygen-Deficient TiO Film.

The theoretical and practical realization of memristive devices has been hailed as the next step for nonvolatile memories, low-power remote sensing, and adaptive intelligent prototypes for neuromorphic and biological systems. However, the active materials of currently available memristors need to undergo an often destructive high-bias electroforming process in order to activate resistive switching. This limits their device performance in switching speed, endurance/retention, and power consumption upon high-density integration, due to excessive Joule heating. By employing a nanocrystalline oxygen-deficient TiO switching matrix to localize the electric field at discrete locations, it is possible to resolve the Joule heating problem by reducing the need for electroforming at high bias. With a Pt/TiO/Pt stacking architecture, our device follows an electric field driven, vacancy-modulated interface-type switching that is sensitive to the junction size. By scaling down the junction size, the SET voltage and output current can be reduced, and a SET voltage as low as +0.59 V can be obtained for a 5 × 5 μm junction size. Along with its potentially fast switching (over 10 cycles with a 100 μs voltage pulse) and high retention (over 10 s) performance, memristors based on these disordered oxygen-deficient TiO films promise viable building blocks for next-generation nonvolatile memories and other logic circuit systems.