Stochastic switching of TiO2-based memristive devices with identical initial memory states

Qingjiang Li; Ali Khiat; Iulia Salaoru; Hui Xu; Themistoklis Prodromakis

doi:10.1186/1556-276X-9-293

Stochastic switching of TiO2-based memristive devices with identical initial memory states

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2014 Jun 10;9(1):293. doi: 10.1186/1556-276X-9-293. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Qingjiang Li¹, Ali Khiat², Iulia Salaoru², Hui Xu³, Themistoklis Prodromakis²

Affiliations

¹ College of Electronics Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China ; Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, Nano Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
² Southampton Nanofabrication Centre, Nano Group, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton SO17 1BJ, UK.
³ College of Electronics Science and Engineering, National University of Defense Technology, Changsha 410073, China.

Abstract

In this work, we show that identical TiO2-based memristive devices that possess the same initial resistive states are only phenomenologically similar as their internal structures may vary significantly, which could render quite dissimilar switching dynamics. We experimentally demonstrated that the resistive switching of practical devices with similar initial states could occur at different programming stimuli cycles. We argue that similar memory states can be transcribed via numerous distinct active core states through the dissimilar reduced TiO2-x filamentary distributions. Our hypothesis was finally verified via simulated results of the memory state evolution, by taking into account dissimilar initial filamentary distribution.

Keywords: Filamentary distribution; Initial state; Resistive switching.