Electrical Switching of Al-Doped Amorphous SiOx Thin Films

This paper's investigations aimed to tackle crystal defects, which lead to reliability issues of resistive memory and we explored films of Al-doped amorphous SiOx as homogeneous matrix. The electrical resistance switching of Pt/Si(Al)Ox/TiN stacks was studied. After a forming process, the SET and RESET voltages are 2.2 and 1.1 V, respectively. The high- and low-resistance states are distinguishable with a resistance ratio ~102 and stable for at least 500 Hz and retaining for over 104 s under an electrical stress of 0.1 V. Because of the formation of bubbles, we tried to use larger current compliance to unveil the possible mechanisms based on filament model and the switching process occurs near the Pt/Si(Al)Ox interface. Finally, we proposed a possible conduction mechanism to describe the resistive switching behavior for Pt/Si(Al)Ox/TiN stacks.