Important of Oxide Electrodes on the Switching Properties of Resistive Random Access Memory

The resistance switching (RS) properties of the oxide based heterostructure investigated. Conducting oxide electrodes LaNiO3 (LNO) and In and Ga co -doped ZnO (IGZO) were grown by pulse laser deposition (PLD) technique on quartz (SiO2) substrate. On the conducting layer of LNO and IGZO, insulator oxide layer of In2O3 and ZrO2 grown by PLD technique to make In2O3/LNO/SiO2 and ZrO2/IGZO/SiO2 structures. Structural, surface, and electrical properties of In2O3/LNO/SiO2 and ZrO2/IGZO/SiO2 heterostructure were carried out at room temperature. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) analysis shows that the both the LNO and IGZO bottom layers has smooth surface to facilitate the smooth growth of the layer on top of it. Polycrystalline growth of oxides LNO and In2O3 and amorphous growth of the ZrO2 and IGZO was confirmed by grazing incident X-ray diffraction (GIXRD) analysis. In2O3/LNO/SiO2 heterostructure gives the unipolar switching properties while ZrO2/IGZO/SiO2 heterostructure has forming free bipolar resistance switching properties. The electrical properties were systematically studied to understand the switching mechanism. A possible mechanism of the resistance switching in both heterostructures was governed by conducting oxide bottom electrode which acts as oxygen reservoirs. The observed resistance switching characteristics offers lot of promise for new class of oxide materials with conducting oxides as bottom electrode leading to better suitability for nanoelectronics resistance random access memory (RRAM) devices.