Nondestructive Readout Complementary Resistive Switches Based on Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions

Zhongnan Xi; Chunyan Zheng; Zheng Wen

doi:10.1021/acsami.7b18363

Nondestructive Readout Complementary Resistive Switches Based on Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Feb 14;10(6):6024-6030. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b18363. Epub 2018 Feb 5.

Authors

Zhongnan Xi¹, Chunyan Zheng¹, Zheng Wen¹

Affiliation

¹ College of Physics and National Demonstration Center for Experimental Applied Physics Education, Qingdao University , Qingdao 266071, China.

PMID: 29368502
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.7b18363

Abstract

Recently, complementary resistive switches (CRSs) have attracted considerable attention because of the effective suppression of the sneak leakage that is an inherent problem of crossbar memory arrays. In this work, we propose a new CRS device enabling nondestructive readout based on back-to-back in-series Pt/BaTiO₃/Nb:SrTiO₃ ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs). The FTJ elements exhibit not only a nonvolatile resistance switching but also a typical diode-like transport in the high-resistance state (HRS) because of the ferroelectric enhancement on the Schottky barrier of the BaTiO₃/Nb:SrTiO₃ interface. With the rectifying characteristic, the complementary HRS + LRS (low-resistance state) and LRS + HRS states can be well-distinguished and nondestructively read out by a subthreshold voltage. In addition, the sneak current is significantly suppressed in the Pt/BaTiO₃/Nb:SrTiO₃ CRS crossbar array, and the maximum scaling size is increased by about 50 times, in comparison to the array constituted by only the single-FTJ devices. These results facilitate the design of high-performance resistive memories based on the crossbar architecture.

Keywords: Schottky barrier; complementary resistive switches; crossbar array; ferroelectric field effect; ferroelectric tunnel junction; resistive switching; sneak leakage.