High-Throughput Screening Thickness-Dependent Resistive Switching in SrTiO3 Thin Films for Robust Electronic Synapse

The functionalities and applications of oxide thin films are highly dependent on their thickness. Most thickness-dependent studies on oxide thin films require the preparation of independent samples, which is labor-intensive and time-consuming and inevitably introduces experimental errors. To address this challenge, a general strategy based on high-throughput pulsed laser deposition technology is proposed to precisely control the thin-film thickness in local regions under similar growth conditions. The as-proposed synthesis strategy is demonstrated using typical complex oxide materials of SrTiO3 (STO). Consequently, high-throughput STO thin films with nine gradient thicknesses ranging from 10.1 to 30.5 nm are fabricated. Notably, a transition from the unipolar to the bipolar resistive switching mode is observed with increasing STO thickness. Moreover, a physical mechanism based on the heterostructure-mediated redistribution of oxygen vacancies is employed to interpret the transition between the two memristive patterns. The screening of STO thin films with different resistive switching behaviors revealed that the STO thin film with a thickness of 20.3 nm exhibit excellent conductance modulation properties under the application of electrical pulses as well as significant reliability for the emulation of various synaptic functions, rendering it a promising material for artificial neuromorphic computing applications.