Switching-behavior improvement in HfO2/ZnO bilayer memory devices by tailoring of interfacial and microstructural characteristics

Wei Zhang; Jianzhang Lei; Yixian Dai; Xuehua Zhang; Limin Kang; Bowen Peng; Fangren Hu

doi:10.1088/1361-6528/ac5e70

Switching-behavior improvement in HfO₂/ZnO bilayer memory devices by tailoring of interfacial and microstructural characteristics

Nanotechnology. 2022 Apr 1;33(25). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac5e70.

Authors

Wei Zhang¹, Jianzhang Lei¹, Yixian Dai¹, Xuehua Zhang¹, Limin Kang², Bowen Peng¹, Fangren Hu¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing 210023, People's Republic of China.
² School of Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 35294938
DOI: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac5e70

Abstract

We investigated the effect of top contact interface and microstructural characteristics of the insulating layers on resistive switching behaviors by fabricating and characterizing the HfO₂/ZnO bilayer heterostructures. Different thickness of ZnO underlying layer and different deposition temperatures of the upper HfO₂layer were designed to analyze the intrinsic contribution of the crystalline microstructure of the insulating bilayer. Pt and Ti top electrodes were used to demonstrate the extrinsic contribution of the interface configuration. It was observed that all devices show bipolar RS characteristics. Unlike the device composed of Pt/HfO₂/ZnO/Pt that exhibit an abrupt switching, a gradually continuous switching in the reset process was identified in the device composed of Ti/HfO₂/ZnO/Pt. Interfacial charge migration process/characteristic plays a key role in the RS process as well as its conduction mechanism. The RS performance of the former is significantly better than that of the latter, including much lower reset voltage, two orders of magnitude larger OFF/ON ratio and HRS resistance. In addition, as compared to the intrinsic contribution arising from the microstructure of the HfO₂/ZnO bilayer to the RS performances and current transport mechanism, the extrinsic effect contributed from the electrode characteristics (and its interface) is dominant.

Keywords: HfO2/ZnO bilayer; RRAM.; bipolar switching; oxygen vacancies; sputtering.