Unipolar resistive switching behavior in MoS2–polyvinyl alcohol-based memory device

Abstract

MoS2–polymer-based memory devices have attracted significant interest owing to their mechanical flexibility, convenient solution processability, and affordability. These devices exhibit bipolar resistive switching behavior, and their switching relies on the polarity of the applied bias. This paper presents a memory device in which a MoS2–polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hybrid film is sandwiched between Ag and Pt electrodes. The developed Ag/MoS2–PVA/Pt device manifests typical unipolar resistive switching (URS) behavior and nonvolatile rewritable memory performance with a low operating voltage, large ON/OFF ratio (105), and multilevel cell storage ability. Notably, 1T-phase MoS2 is crucial for the URS behavior, and this switching behavior can be ascribed to the charge trapping as well as the Joule-heating-induced de-trapping of the S vacancies associated with 1T MoS2. These findings can facilitate the development of new designs for high-performance, high-density data storage.