بررسی اجمالی خانواده های ممریستور نو ظهور از ممریستور مقاومتی برای مموریستور اسپینترونیک Overview of emerging memristor families from resistive memristor to spintronic memristor

۲ Resistive memristor Before the advent of the resistive memristor, resistive materials have already been widely utilized in the resistive random access memories (ReRAM) [25–۲۷]. The storage function of ReRAM is realised by an intrinsic physical behaviour observed in ReRAM, namely resistive switching. Because of the resistive switching, the resistive material can be switched between a high resistance state (HRS) and a low resistance state (LRS) under an external electrical stimuli. The switching process from HRS to LRS and the corresponding switching voltage are usually named ‘SET’ process and VSET, while the process from LRS to HRS and the required switching voltage are represented by ‘RESET’ process and VRESET. It is instructive to mention that in most cases, the current stemming from the external stimuli is restricted to a local region with high conductance during ‘SET’ process, whereas it flows uniformly through ReRAM during ‘RESET’ process [28]. It should be also noted that in bistable resistive materials, like some transition metal oxides, there are usually two switching modes, i.e., unipolar switching and bipolar switching, as shown in Fig. 3. Unipolar switching allows for a switching process that is independent of the voltage/current polarity. Therefore, the ‘SET’ process and the ‘RESET’ process is achieved with the same signal polarity. However, the bipolar switching mode gives rise to an opposite signal polarity between the ‘SET’ process and the ‘RESET’ process. The comparison between Figs. 2, 3 clearly shows that the resistive material when operated in the bipolar switching mode exhibits an analogous I–V curve to that of the theoretical memristor. As a consequence, considerable research efforts have been recently dedicated to the development of the memristor using resistive materials such as TiO2 [9, 11, 29], ZnO [30], and TaOx [31, 32], thus triggering a presence of some resistive materials-based memristor prototypes. The architecture of the memristor using resistive materials usually consists of an insulator sandwiched by two metals, also known as MIM structure, as illustrated in Fig. 4. By changing the magnitude and the polarity of the signal applied to the metals (i.e., electrodes here), the sandwiched insulator can be toggled between the ‘ON’ state and the ‘OFF’ state so as to realise the memristive function. Although such a resistance transition phenomenon has been found for many years, the correlated physical mechanism is still not well understood. Today, the electric pulse induced resistance switching (EPIR) effect is the most generally accepted mechanism. The most appealing trait of EPIR arises from its strong field-direction dependence, indicating that the resistance of the system can be toggled by theapplied voltage or current pulses to generate the I–V hysteresis that supplies the function of the resistance memory. Although the secret behind EPIR is still uncovered, the consensus is that the EPIR effect will cause the formation and rupture of a conductive filament (CF) inside the resistive materials [33]. Thermochemical effect has been regarded as one of the most plausible explanations for the CF hypothesis [34–۳۶]. The thermochemical mechanism assumes a large number of O2- ions accumulated around the electrode, thus leading to a formation of oxygen vacancies. With an application of a negative bias to the top electrode, the O2- ions are pushed away from the top electrode, while the oxygen vacancies are attracted towards the top electrode. In this case, the vacancy dopants would drift in the electric field through the most favourable diffusion paths, such as grain boundaries, to form a filamentlike path with a high electrical conductivity [37]. Once the CFs are formed, the current flow that would concentrate on the resulting filaments can trigger a fast growth of these filaments due to the local heating by the concentrated current flow, which corresponds to a ‘SET’ process. The ‘RESET’ process, is postulated to be realized by the thermal rupture of the filaments according to the heat produced in the presence of a large current flow. In contrast to the thermochemical effect, another interpretation ascribed the occurring of the CF to the motion of the oxygen ions that usually appear near crystal defects such as oxygen vacancies and grain boundaries [28, 38, 39]. As shown in Fig. 5a, applying a positive bias to the top electrode would drive the oxygen ions towards the top electrode where the oxygen ions will thereby accumulate. This migration would produce abundant cation vacancies therein Fig. 5b. As the cation vacancies that can create an acceptor level near the valence band are the source of the hole carriers in semiconductors, it is possible for these newly created cation vacancies to be transformed into the nuclei of semiconducting CFs. Subsequently these nuclei will grow with the assist of the electric field to form a CF extending through the whole thickness of the storage medium (Fig. 5c), and finally the memory cell would reach the LRS. Due to the fact that the CF actually grows from anode to cathode, the thinnest region of the CF is regarded to be located near the cathode [28]. As a result, more Joule heating will be accumulated at the thinnest part of the CF when negatively biasing the top electrode. Under this circumstance, the oxygen ions at the thinnest part of the CF will be aggressively accelerated towards the bottom electrode and then be trapped at the storage medium/bottom electrode interface or the grain boundaries of the bottom electrode. This motion would destroy the concentration of the cation vacancies in the thinnest part of the CF, thus resulting in the rupture of the CF, as shown in Fig. 5d. The memory cell will consequently be switched into the HRS.