A Ta<inf>2</inf>O<inf>5</inf> solid-electrolyte switch with improved reliability

Abstract

We present a novel solid-electrolyte switch ("NanoBridge") promising for application to field programmable gate array (FPGA). We replace a former solid electrolyte of Cu <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> S with Ta <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5</sub> , which has a Si-process compatibility, . As a result, we successfully control the turn-on voltage to adapt to CMOS operation. The Ta <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> O <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">5</sub> -NanoBridge exhibits a high reliability of cycling endurance (>10 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sup> ) and a stability against EM (>10 years at 2.6 mA at RT). Furthermore, we demonstrate that the conducting path of the switch is a Cu precipitate with 30 nm in diameter, which possibly enables to scale down the switch.