Effects of high energy heavy ion irradiation on resistive switches

Abstract

Resistive switches have great potential in aerospace application due to their excellent radiation resistibility. It is important to study the effect of radiation on resistive switches. In this work, we use Ta5+ with an energy of 125 MeV to irradiate the Cu/Ta2O5/Pt devices. Here, fresh devices are irradiated by 108 and 109 ions/cm2 Ta5+, respectively. The devices exhibit high radiation resistibility under an irradiation dosage of 108 ions/cm2. However, the operating voltage was changed from 5 ~ −2 V to 2 ~ −1.5 V under a dosage of 109 ions/cm2. High energy heavy ion irradiation can controllably modify the density of defects or pores in resistive layer, reduce the barrier height of the redox reaction and achieve rapid migration of large amounts of ions. Moreover, the defects or pores generated by irradiation will provide growth paths for preventing conductive filaments from random growth and adjust the size of conductive filaments, making them more likely be in a stable state with the lowest energy and increasing the retention to be more than 8 × 104 s under a current compliance of 100 μA.