Interpretation of set and reset switching in nickel oxide thin films

Abstract

Many attempts have been tried to improve switching characteristics of resistive switching materials such as NiOx because it gives scattered switching current and voltage values [J. F. Gibbons and W. E. Beadle, Solid-State Electron. 7, 785–790 (1964); S. Seo et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 85, 5655–5657 (2004); H. D. Lee et al., Phys. Rev. B 81, 193202 (2010); S. I. Kim et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 104, 023513 (2014); M.-J. Lee et al., Nano Lett. 9, 1476–1481 (2009)]. The nature of scattering should be understood based on switching mechanism and the source of scattering in order to improve switching properties. Here, the long tail in scatter data—the data points which are observed only one or two times during switching—was investigated. Techniques such as multiple input pulses are proposed in order to avoid switching missing and size scaling of switching devices are suggested in order to improve data scattering. In addition, discovery of double switching curves in unipolar switching is presented.