Giant Electroresistance in Ferroionic Tunnel Junctions

Jiankun Li; Ning Li; Chen Ge; Heyi Huang; Yuanwei Sun; Peng Gao; Meng He; Can Wang; Guozhen Yang; Kuijuan Jin

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2019.05.043

Giant Electroresistance in Ferroionic Tunnel Junctions

iScience. 2019 Jun 28:16:368-377. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2019.05.043. Epub 2019 Jun 3.

Authors

Jiankun Li¹, Ning Li², Chen Ge³, Heyi Huang¹, Yuanwei Sun², Peng Gao⁴, Meng He¹, Can Wang⁵, Guozhen Yang¹, Kuijuan Jin⁶

Affiliations

¹ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
² International Center for Quantum Materials and Electron Microscopy Laboratory, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
³ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Shanghai 200241, China. Electronic address: gechen@iphy.ac.cn.
⁴ International Center for Quantum Materials and Electron Microscopy Laboratory, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; Collaborative Innovation Centre of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100871, China. Electronic address: p-gao@pku.edu.cn.
⁵ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808, China.
⁶ Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China; Songshan Lake Materials Laboratory, Dongguan, Guangdong 523808, China. Electronic address: kjjin@iphy.ac.cn.

Abstract

Oxide-based resistive switching devices, including ferroelectric tunnel junctions and resistance random access memory, are promising candidates for the next-generation non-volatile memory technology. In this work, we propose a ferroionic tunnel junction to realize a giant electroresistance. It functions as a ferroelectric tunnel junction at low resistance state and as a Schottky junction at high resistance state, due to interface engineering through the field-induced migration of oxygen vacancies. An extremely large electroresistance with ON/OFF ratios of 5.1×10⁷ at room temperature and 2.1×10⁹ at 10 K is achieved, using an ultrathin BaTiO_3-δ layer as the ferroelectric barrier and a semiconducting Nb-doped SrTiO₃ substrate as the bottom electrode. The results point toward an appealing way for the design of high-performance resistive switching devices based on ultrathin oxide heterostructures by ionic controlled interface engineering.

Keywords: Devices; Interface Science; Transport Property of Condensed Matter.