Resistance given by tiling grain surface with micro surface structures in polycrystalline metal oxide

Abstract

Practical use of Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM) depends on thorough understanding of the resistive switching (RS) mechanism in transition metal oxides. Although most of ReRAM samples have polycrystalline structures, both experimental studies and theoretical calculations do not often consider the effects that grain boundaries have on the RS mechanism. This paper discusses what determines resistance values in a Pt/polycrystalline NiO/Pt ReRAM structures by using both experiments and first-principles calculations. Electrical measurements suggest that the RS is caused in the grain boundaries of NiO films. First-principles calculations indicate that slight displacements of atoms with a small energy change of 0.04 eV per atom on the surfaces exposed in the grain boundaries can drastically change conductivities. We propose the tiling model, in which grain surfaces are composed by insulating and conductive micro surface structures, and the surface resistances are determined by the tiling patterns.