Bipolar Resistive Switching in Junctions of Gallium Oxide and p-type Silicon

Mahmoud N Almadhoun; Maximilian Speckbacher; Brian C Olsen; Erik J Luber; Sayed Youssef Sayed; Marc Tornow; Jillian M Buriak

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c00539

Bipolar Resistive Switching in Junctions of Gallium Oxide and p-type Silicon

Nano Lett. 2021 Mar 24;21(6):2666-2674. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c00539. Epub 2021 Mar 10.

Authors

Mahmoud N Almadhoun¹, Maximilian Speckbacher², Brian C Olsen¹, Erik J Luber¹, Sayed Youssef Sayed¹, Marc Tornow^{2

3

4}, Jillian M Buriak¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, University of Alberta, 11227 Saskatchewan Drive, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2G2, Canada.
² Molecular Electronics, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Technical University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany.
³ Center for NanoScience (CeNS), Ludwig-Maximilians-University, 80539 Munich, Germany.
⁴ Fraunhofer Research Institution for Microsystems and Solid State Technologies (EMFT), 80686 Munich, Germany.

PMID: 33689381
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.1c00539

Abstract

In this work, native GaO_x is positioned between bulk gallium and degenerately doped p-type silicon (p⁺-Si) to form Ga/GaO_x/SiO_x/p⁺-Si junctions. These junctions show memristive behavior, exhibiting large current-voltage hysteresis. When cycled between -2.5 and 2.5 V, an abrupt insulator-metal transition is observed that is reversible when the polarity is reversed. The ON/OFF ratio between the high and low resistive states in these junctions can reach values on the order of 10⁸ and retain the ON and OFF resistive states for up to 10⁵ s with an endurance exceeding 100 cycles. The presence of a nanoscale layer of gallium oxide is critical to achieving reversible resistive switching by formation and dissolution of the gallium filament across the switching layer.

Keywords: electrochemical metallization; gallium oxide; memristor; nonvolatile memory switching; resistive switching.