High mechanical endurance RRAM based on amorphous gadolinium oxide for flexible nonvolatile memory application

Abstract

In this paper, we use amorphous Gd2O3 as the switching layer for fabricated RRAM devices with novel high performance, excellent flexibility, and mechanical endurance properties as potential candidate memory for flexible electronics applications. The obtained Cu/Gd2O3/Pt devices on flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates show bipolar switching characteristics, low voltage operation (<2 V) and long retention time (>106 s). No performance degradation occurs, and the stored information is not lost after the device has been bent to different angles and up to 104 times in the bending tests. Based on temperature-dependent switching characteristics, the formation of Cu conducting filaments stemming from electrochemical reactions is believed to be the reason for the resistance switching from a high resistance state to a low resistance state. The studies of the integrated experiment and mechanism lay the foundation for the development of high-performance flexible RRAM.