Reliability Improvement of Amorphous Carbon Based Resistive Switching Memory by Inserting Nanoporous Layer

Abstract

In this letter, we demonstrated a novel approach to effectively improve the reliability of amorphous carbon (a-C) memory via the insertion of a thin nanoporous TiOxNy layer between the top electrode and the a-C. Owing to the nanoporous structure of TiOxNy, Ag atoms could migrate into the film during the Ag electrode evaporation process, resulting in a pre-formed Ag tip inside the TiOxNy layer. The Ag tip provides an enhancement of the local electric field, and a confinement of the Ag conductive filament (CF) location and Ag atom distribution is therefore created using this method. Compared with its counterpart without a nanoporous layer, the growth of CF into a-C started preferentially from this tip with its simple structure, leading to good switching reliability.