(Invited) Impact of Surface Roughness of the Electrodes on the Resistive Switching in ReRam Devices. (24th April 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Al-Mamun, Mohammad; Chakraborty, Amrita; Li, Yanlong; Orlowski, Marius K
• Is Part Of: ECS transactions. Volume 97:Number 1(2020)
• Page Start: 133
• Page End: 143
• Publication Date: 2020-04-24
• Subjects: Electrochemistry -- Periodicals; Electrochemistry; Periodicals; Electronic journals; Electronic journal; 541.37
• DOI: 10.1149/09701.0133ecst
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1938-5862

Abstract

Abstract : The paper explores the impact of the surface roughness of the metal electrodes on the electric performance of resistive memory (ReRAM) devices, such as Cu/TaOx /Pt, Cu/TaOx /Ru, and Cu/TaOx /Co. The electrical characterization confirms that the surface roughness has a substantial impact on the forming voltages of the device but no impact on the set or reset voltages. The surface roughness can be controlled by the metal deposition conditions, post-deposition surface treatment, such as ion bombardment or reactive ion etching, and by annealing at elevated temperatures. We find that annealing of free metal surfaces of Pt, Ru, and Co at 600 o C and 900 o C leads to significantly higher surface roughness whereas the Cu surface roughness while being nominally constant shows at 600 o C large 100 nm sized hillock formation. The difference in surface roughness explains the differences between the forming voltages (Vform ) of the ReRAM devices as well the broadness of the Vform distributions.