Ultra-high ON/OFF ratio with low set voltage for a Pt-Nb2O5-Pt resistivity switching device

• Published in: Physics letters. A Vol. 512; p. 129568
• Main Authors: Gao, Pengbo, Guo, Jiacheng, Li, Qifeng, Dong, Zhihu, Zhu, Yuanyuan, Xu, Jing, Liu, Yong, Wang, Hongjun, He, Chunqing
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier B.V 15.07.2024
• Subjects: Annealing; Nb2O5; Oxygen vacancy engineering; Resistive switching; Annealing; Oxygen vacancy engineering; Nb2O5; Resistive switching
• ISSN: 0375-9601; 1873-2429
• DOI: 10.1016/j.physleta.2024.129568

•Annealing treatment significantly improves the resistance-switching ratio of Pt/Nb2O5/Pt devices.•Annealing increases the concentration of oxygen vacancies around grain boundaries.•A highly crystalline Nb2O5 film exhibits improved resistive switching stability. The limited ON/OFF ratio constrains the quantity of available resistance states and the multi-level storage capability, a high ON/OFF ratio (>103) is essential for implementing multi-level storage in a resistive device. Through annealing processes for Nb2O5 films prepared by magnetron sputtering, we successfully achieved an ultra-high ON/OFF ratio of 106 and a four-order higher resistance compared to conventional binary oxide resistive random-access memory. Results confirm that annealing can effectively modulate the content of oxygen vacancies within the resistance-switching layer and the formation path of oxygen vacancies. At the same time, we observed a gradual decrease in the set voltage of the device with increasing annealing temperature, which is beneficial for the low power consumption characteristics. Therefore, appropriate annealing is a novel and effective approach to optimize device performances for better information storage applications, and its core mechanism is to modulate the concentration of Vo for constructing fixed conductive paths.