Improvement in Threshold Switching Performance Using Al₂O₃ Interfacial Layer in Ag/Al₂O₃/SiOₓ/W Cross-Point Platform

Abstract

An Al2O3/SiOx bi-layer cross-point selector was proposed and experimentally demonstrated in this work to mitigate the sneak path leakage issue in the high density passive crossbar array. A 2 nm Al2O3 interfacial layer confines filament dissolution gap caused by Ag diffusion into the SiOx layer, enabling significant improvement in uniformity and other electrical performances as compared to the monolayer SiOx selector (without Al2O3 layer). Devices with Al2O3 interfacial layer exhibit I-V characteristics with large selectivity of $> 5\times 10^{{7}}$ , high rectifying ratio ( RR ) of $> 5\times 10^{{7}}$ , high ON state current density of $> 10^{{3}}~\text{A}\cdot $ cm $^{\text {-2}}$ , steep slope subthreshold swing ( SS ) of $> 10~^{{4}}$ seconds were also demonstrated.