Magnetic field control and swift heavy ion beam assisted tuning of resistive switching properties of BSFO/CFO/LNO heterostructures

Abstract

Resistive switching (RS) behavior in mixed oxide insulators has shown a great promise as memristors or non-volatile resistive random-access memory (RRAM) applications. For dilute magnetic oxide multilayers, a novel approach of controlled defects induced and the magnetic field control of RS behavior is proposed. Resistive switching in Bi0.6Sr0.4FeO3 /CoFe2O4 /LaNiO3 (BSFO/CFO/LNO) multilayer heterostructures has been investigated as a case study. All oxide junctions consisting of conducting LaNiO3 (LNO) bottom electrode and BSFO-CFO active layers were fabricated by using chemical solution deposition. A set of samples were irradiated with 150 MeV Ag11+ ions for three different ion fluence of ∼1 × 10+11 ions cm−2, 1 × 10+12 ions cm−2 and 5 × 10+12 ions cm−2. Polycrystalline phase pure films with smooth, crack free surfaces were observed for pristine and irradiated samples. Optical spectroscopy revealed a decrease in the transmittance upon increasing ion fluence due to increase in the light scattering centres. The optical band gap showed a systematic decrease from 2.09 eV to 1.65 eV with increasing ion fluence. Room temperature I-V characteristics showed consistent and pronounced bipolar switching for all samples below ± 5 V. Upon applied magnetic fields of 0.58 T, the resistive switching ratios were found to increase significantly and were further tuned by 150 MeV Ag11+ ion beam irradiations. The magnetic field control of electrical transport properties in the controlled defect assisted oxide heterojunctions offers new insights to the existing understanding of oxide-based RS mechanism.