CBRAM technology: transition from a memory cell to a programmable and non-volatile impedance for new radiofrequency applications

Sergio López-Soriano,Arnaud Vena,Etienne Perret,Jayakrishnan Methapettyparambu Purushothama

doi:10.1038/s41598-022-08127-x

Abstract

Electrical resistance control programming of conductive bridging random access memory (CBRAM) radio frequency (RF) switches could benefit the development of electronically controlled non-volatile RF attenuators and other reconfigurable devices. The object of this study is to adapt a conventional CBRAM based memory cell to be used as an RF switch, and to demonstrate the feasibility of programming non-volatile RF CBRAM switches to achieve specific target resistances within a range of continuous values. The memory-RF technologic transition implies a drastic increase of the geometry in order to handle a much higher power, a decrease of the transition capacitance in order to operate at much higher frequencies, and a decrease of the LRS to a few ohms, which is critical for RF applications. These studies are initially performed on an in-house made RF CBRAM cell array at DC frequency, and then extended successfully to a co-planar waveguide (CPW) based shunt mode RF switch with an integrated CBRAM cell. Reliability of the proposed technique is validated through detailed analysis of factors like repeatability of the process, time stability of programmed states, and statistics of time taken to converge to a desired resistance value for an arbitrary RF CBRAM switch.

Highlights

Electrical resistance control programming of conductive bridging random access memory (CBRAM) radio frequency (RF) switches could benefit the development of electronically controlled non-volatile RF attenuators and other reconfigurable devices
For RF switching applications, it is necessary that the low resistance state (LRS) should always be minimum, in the order of a few ohms, and the high resistance state (HRS) should be of the order of a few hundreds of ohms, to respectively facilitate excellent RF transmission and isolation behaviour with minimum ohmic losses[7,9,13]
The results presented in the previous section support the proposed algorithm as an effective tool for the resistance programing of RF CBRAM cells to the desired target resistance with an error smaller than 10%

Summary

Introduction

Electrical resistance control programming of conductive bridging random access memory (CBRAM) radio frequency (RF) switches could benefit the development of electronically controlled non-volatile RF attenuators and other reconfigurable devices. The memory-RF technologic transition implies a drastic increase of the geometry in order to handle a much higher power, a decrease of the transition capacitance in order to operate at much higher frequencies, and a decrease of the LRS to a few ohms, which is critical for RF applications These studies are initially performed on an in-house made RF CBRAM cell array at DC frequency, and extended successfully to a co-planar waveguide (CPW) based shunt mode RF switch with an integrated CBRAM cell. Instead of having a CBRAM with two states (classic high or low states for memory, or ON or OFF states in RF applications), it is expected to be able to parameterize the CBRAM so that it can have a number of discrete resistances among the LRS and HRS v alues[16–18] These approaches rely on fixing the programming pulse parameters, expecting that the cell will be programmed. RF applications require a continuous range of resistance values in order to provide high accuracy when tuning the S-parameters, as it will be demonstrated later in this document

Methods

Results

Conclusion