Inexpensive Fabrication of Sn-Ag- Cu/Cu:ZnO/Al/PET Memristive Devices through Unconventional Synthesis Techniques

Abstract

In the last few decades there has been rapidly growing research interest in resistive switching devices which led to tremendous technological advancements. In this work, copper (Cu) doped zinc oxide (ZnO) thin film was deposited on Aluminum coated PET conductive sheets having a sheet resistance of 20 Ω. Soldering balls of 2 mm diameter consisting of 96.5% Sn, 3% Ag and 0.5% Cu alloy were dropped into this thin film to form the Sn-Ag- Cu/Cu:ZnO/Al/PET memristive devices. No additional annealing temperature was required as the heat transfer from 350 C hot soldering ball onto the Cu:ZnO thin film was sufficient to anneal the thin film. The electronic characteristics of the device were obtained by employing a function generator and an oscilloscope instead of an expensive source meter. The elimination of redundant hot furnace (for annealing) and source meter (for I-V characterization) resulted in the improvement of total equipment expenses by ~96%.