Built-in Homojunction Dominated Intrinsically Rectifying-Resistive Switching in NiO Nanodots for Selection Device-Free Memory Application

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel IR-RS mechanism based on built-in homojunctions in NiO nanodots, demonstrating high-performance, high-density, and uniform resistive memory suitable for device-free memory arrays.

Contribution

It reports the first use of built-in homojunctions to achieve IR-RS in NiO nanodots, advancing resistive memory technology without the need for selection devices.

Findings

High storage density and uniformity in NiO nanodots

IR-RS behavior with excellent retention and endurance

Potential for 3 Mbit crossbar array integration

Abstract

The intrinsically rectifying-resistive switching (IR-RS) has been regarded as an effective way to address the crosstalk issue, due to the Schottky diodes formed at the metal/oxide interfaces in the ON states to suppress the sneak current at reverse biases. In this letter, we report for the first time another type of IR-RS that is related to the built-in homojunction. The IR-RS study was usually limited to macroscopic samples with micron-order pad-type electrodes, while this work is on NiO nanodots fabricated with ultrathin anodic-aluminum-oxide templates and acting as nanoscaled analogs of real devices. The NiO nanodots show high storage density and high uniformity, and the IR-RS behaviors are of good device performances in terms of retention, endurance, switching ratio and rectification ratio. The feasibility of the IR-RS for selection device-free memory application has been demonstrated, by calculating the maximum crossbar array size under the worst-case scenario to be 3 Mbit.