Low-Power, Self-Rectifying, and Forming-Free Memristor with an Asymmetric Programing Voltage for a High-Density Crossbar Application

Kyung Min Kim; Jiaming Zhang; Catherine Graves; J Joshua Yang; Byung Joon Choi; Cheol Seong Hwang; Zhiyong Li; R Stanley Williams

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01781

Low-Power, Self-Rectifying, and Forming-Free Memristor with an Asymmetric Programing Voltage for a High-Density Crossbar Application

Nano Lett. 2016 Nov 9;16(11):6724-6732. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01781. Epub 2016 Oct 17.

Authors

Kyung Min Kim¹, Jiaming Zhang¹, Catherine Graves¹, J Joshua Yang², Byung Joon Choi³, Cheol Seong Hwang⁴, Zhiyong Li¹, R Stanley Williams¹

Affiliations

¹ Hewlett Packard Labs, Hewlett Packard Enterprise , Palo Alto, California 94304, United States.
² Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Massachusetts , Amherst, Massachusetts 01003, United States.
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Seoul National University of Science and Technology , Seoul 139-743, Republic of Korea.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Inter-University Semiconductor Research Center, College of Engineering, Seoul National University , Seoul 151-744, Republic of Korea.

PMID: 27661260
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b01781

Abstract

A Pt/NbO_x/TiO_y/NbO_x/TiN stack integrated on a 30 nm contact via shows a programming current as low as 10 nA and 1 pA for the set and reset switching, respectively, and a self-rectifying ratio as high as ∼10⁵, which are suitable characteristics for low-power memristor applications. It also shows a forming-free characteristic. A charge-trap-associated switching model is proposed to account for this self-rectifying memrisive behavior. In addition, an asymmetric voltage scheme (AVS) to decrease the write power consumption by utilizing this self-rectifying memristor is also described. When the device is used in a 1000 × 1000 crossbar array with the AVS, the programming power can be decreased to 8.0% of the power consumption of a conventional biasing scheme. If the AVS is combined with a nonlinear selector, a power consumption reduction to 0.31% of the reference value is possible.

Keywords: Low current; forming-free; low power; memristor; self-rectifying.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't