Effect of cation amount in the electrolyte on characteristics of Ag/TiO2 based threshold switching devices

Abstract

In this study, we investigate the effect of cation amount in an electrolyte on Ag/TiO2 based threshold switching (TS) devices, based on field-induced nucleation theory. For this purpose, normal Ag/TiO2, annealed Ag/TiO2, and AgTe/TiO2 based TS devices are prepared, which have different cation amounts in their electrolytes during the switching process. First, we find that all of the prepared TS devices follow the field-induced nucleation theory with different nucleation barrier energy (W0), by investigating the delay-time dependency at various voltages and temperatures. Based on the investigation, we reveal that the amount of cations in the electrolyte during the switching process is the control parameter that affects the W0 values, which are found to be inversely proportional to the turn-off speed of the TS devices. This implies that the turn-off speed of the TS devices can be modulated by controlling the amount of cations in the matrix.