Resistive switching and conductance quantization in Ag/SiO2/indium tin oxide resistive memories

Abstract

The Ag/SiO2/indium tin oxide (ITO) devices exhibit bipolar resistive switching with a large memory window of ∼102, satisfactory endurance of >500 cycles, good retention property of >2000 s, and fast operation speed of <100 ns, thus being a type of promising resistive memory. Under slow voltage sweep measurements, conductance plateaus with a conductance value of integer or half-integer multiples of single atomic point contact have been observed, which agree well with the physical phenomenon of conductance quantization. More importantly, the Ag/SiO2/ITO devices exhibit more distinct quantized conductance plateaus under pulse measurements, thereby showing the potential for realizing ultra-high storage density.