Spectromicroscopy of tantalum oxide memristors

Abstract

We report experiments to measure material changes in tantalum oxide-based memristive devices. The high endurance and low power demonstrated in this material system suggests a unique mechanism for the switching, which we investigated using x-ray based spectromicroscopy and nanospectroscopy. Our study nondestructively identified a localized (<150nm diameter) Ta-rich phase surrounded by nano- or polycrystalline Ta2O5.