Conduction mechanisms at low- and high-resistance states in aluminum/anodic aluminum oxide/aluminum thin film structure

Abstract

In this work, conduction mechanisms of Al/anodic Al oxide/ Al structure, which exhibits resistive switching behavior, have been investigated. The low-resistance state shows ohmic conduction with a metal-like behavior similar to that of pure aluminum. The situation can be explained by the existence of the metallic filament formed by the excess Al in the Al oxide. On the other hand, the high-resistance state (HRS) shows two distinct regimes: ohmic conduction at low fields with a semiconductor-like behavior; and a non-ohmic conduction at high fields. The ohmic conduction of HRS at low fields is attributed to the electron hopping between the states in the oxide with the activation energy of $0.23 eV. It is suggested that the conduction of HRS at high fields (the maximum voltage is lower than the set voltage) is due to the field-enhanced thermal excitation of the electrons trapped in the states of the metallic Al nano-phase into the conduction band of the Al oxide or the electron emission from the potential well of the metallic Al nano-phase to the conduction band. V

Conduction Mechanism of Valence Change Resistive Switching Memory: A Survey

“…Zhu et al [36] observed that the anodic-AlOx device with homogenous Al electrode is fit to both P-F and Schottky emission expression. Since symmetrical check on I-V relation is not possible due to homogenous electrodes, Zhu et al resorted to compare the activation energies (Ea) extracted from the respective Arrhenius plots, but found that the extracted values are close (0.41-0.43 eV) and indecisive.…”

“…Hence, the existence of Schottky emission can be ascertained by fitting to two functions, which are: (i) ln(J/T 2 ) ∝ 1/T under fixed electric field; and (ii) ln(J) ∝ E 1/2 under fixed temperature. There are numerous published resistive switching devices that suggested Schottky emission as the dominant conduction mechanism, such as [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42], etc. The combination of electrodes and materials of these works is listed in Table 3.…”

“…While CF evolution is typically associated with thermal, electrical or ion migration [19,20], there is no consensus on the dominant conduction mechanism in resistive switching memory devices [21][22][23]. Among the commonly observed conduction mechanisms are: (i) Poole-Frenkel emission [24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32]; (ii) Schottky emission [33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42]; (iii) SCLC [43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53] (iv) trap-assisted tunneling [54][55][56][57][58][59]; and (v) hopping conduction [60][61][62][63][64][65]. To enhance the device performance and data retention property, it is crucial to identifying t...…”

Photoluminescent, morphological and electrical properties of ZrO2 and ZrO2:polyvinyl alcohol composite thin films

“…5(a) shows double-logarithmic J-V plots at the positive voltage (that is, substrate injection) for Au/ZrO 2 /n-Si devices. The weak temperature dependence for J-V characteristics suggests that the space charge limited current (SCLC) can be considered as the main conduction mechanism [25]. Within the positive voltage region, the slope is very close to linear in the low voltage region, which corresponds to the Ohmic law region (J-V).…”

Electrical conduction mechanism of Zn:SiOx resistance random access memory with supercritical CO2 fluid process

“…This indicates that current conduction represents Ohmic conduction with metal-like behavior due to phonon scattering of the electrons transportation in the filament. 15 The Ohmic conduction with metal-like behavior in untreated Zn:SiO x thin film can be explained by accumulation of excessive metal phase zinc, which may lead to the formation of metallic filament. Ohmic conduction is further testified by current fitting, which was shown as the bottom left inset of Fig.…”