One step hydrothermal preparation of NiO nanostructures for NextGen resistive switching device applications

Abstract

The need of finding novel functional nanostructured materials to produce cost effective, reliable and high-performance devices are crucial for the future developments. Since the conventional memory technology struggles in various aspects of quantum mechanical and physical limitations, promising next generation memory technology is in high demand. In this study, NiO nanodisks (NDs) and nanorings (NRs) are synthesized by a straightforward hydrothermal route, and the products are characterized using XRD, XPS, SEM, EDS, and TEM. The sandwich structured ReRAM devices have been fabricated by the dispersion of homogenous NDs and NRs on n-Si (100) substrate (bottom electrode) followed by the thermal deposition of Au top electrode on the active layer. Forming free bipolar resistive switching is observed in both fabricated devices; later the device performance has been studied systematically at room temperature and elaborated in detail. Oxygen vacancy produced in the annealed NRs is accounted for the superior switching and conducting filament formation. Finally, we have illustrated the switching mechanism through the construction and annihilation of conductive filaments by oxygen ions and oxygen vacancies present in the crystal lattice along with the band structure alignment of the fabricated device under positive and negative bias followed by the discussion on the fabricated NiO nanostructures. Our proposed NiO nanostructure based ReRAM produced by low-cost one-step hydrothermal method is a promising candidate for the next generation information storage devices.