Nondestructive Readout Complementary Resistive Switches Based on Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions.

Recently, complementary resistive switches (CRSs) have attracted considerable attention because of the effective suppression of the sneak leakage that is an inherent problem of crossbar memory arrays. In this work, we propose a new CRS device enabling nondestructive readout based on back-to-back in-series Pt/BaTiO/Nb:SrTiO ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs). The FTJ elements exhibit not only a nonvolatile resistance switching but also a typical diode-like transport in the high-resistance state (HRS) because of the ferroelectric enhancement on the Schottky barrier of the BaTiO/Nb:SrTiO interface. With the rectifying characteristic, the complementary HRS + LRS (low-resistance state) and LRS + HRS states can be well-distinguished and nondestructively read out by a subthreshold voltage. In addition, the sneak current is significantly suppressed in the Pt/BaTiO/Nb:SrTiO CRS crossbar array, and the maximum scaling size is increased by about 50 times, in comparison to the array constituted by only the single-FTJ devices. These results facilitate the design of high-performance resistive memories based on the crossbar architecture.