7 research outputs found
Plausible Physical Mechanisms for Unusual Volatile/Non-Volatile Resistive Switching in HfO2-Based Stacks
Memristive devices made of silicon compatible simple oxides are of great
interest for storage and logic devices in future adaptable electronics and
non-digital computing applications. A series of highly desirable properties
observed in an atomic-layer-deposited hafnia-based stack, triggered our
interest to investigate their suitability for technological implementations. In
this paper, we report our attempts to reproduce the observed behaviour within
the framework of a proposed underlying mechanism. The inability of achieving
the electrical response of the original batch indicates that a key aspect in
those devices has remained undetected. By comparing newly made devices with the
original ones, we gather some clues on the plausible alternative mechanisms
that could give rise to comparable electrical behaviours
Magneto-ionic control of spin polarization in multiferroic tunnel junctions
Magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 barriers are reported to
show both tunneling magnetoresistance effect (TMR) and tunneling
electroresistance effect (TER), displaying four resistance states by magnetic
and electric field switching. Here we show that, under electric field cycling
of large enough magnitude, the TER can reach values as large as 10^6%.
Moreover, concomitant with this TER enhancement, the devices develop electrical
control of spin polarization, with sign reversal of the TMR effect. Currently,
this intermediate state exists for a limited number of cycles and understanding
the origin of these phenomena is key to improve its stability. The experiments
presented here point to the magneto-ionic effect as the origin of the large TER
and strong magneto-electric coupling, showing that ferroelectric polarization
switching of the tunnel barrier is not the main contribution
The Atomic Layer Deposition Technique for the Fabrication of Memristive Devices: Impact of the Precursor on Pre-deposited Stack Materials
Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a standard technique employed to grow thin-film oxides for a variety of applications. We describe the technique and demonstrate its use for obtaining memristive devices. The metal/insulator/metal stack is fabricated by means of ALD-grown HfO2, deposited on top of a highly doped Si substrate with an SiO2 film and a Ti electrode. Enhanced device capabilities (forming free, self-limiting current, non-crossing hysteretic current-voltage features) are presented and discussed. Careful analysis of the stack structure by means of X-ray reflectometry, atomic force microscopy, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy revealed a modification of the device stack from the intended sequence, HfO2/Ti/SiO2/Si. Analytical studies unravel an oxidation of the Ti layer which is addressed for the use of the ozone precursor in the HfO2 ALD process. A new deposition process and the model deduced from impedance measurements support our hypothesis: the role played by ozone on the previously deposited Ti layer is found to determine the overall features of the device. Besides, these ALD-tailored multifunctional devices exhibit rectification capability and long enough retention time to deserve their use as memory cells in a crossbar architecture and multibit approach, envisaging other potential applications
Field-dependent roughness of moving domain walls in a Pt/Co/Pt magnetic thin film
The creep motion of domain walls driven by external fields in magnetic thin
films is described by universal features related to the underlying depinning
transition. One key parameter in this description is the roughness exponent
characterizing the growth of fluctuations of the domain wall position with its
longitudinal length scale. The roughness amplitude, which gives information
about the scale of fluctuations, however, has received less attention. Albeit
their relevance, experimental reports of the roughness parameters, both
exponent and amplitude, are scarce. We report here experimental values of the
roughness parameters for different magnetic field intensities in the creep
regime at room temperature for a Pt/Co/Pt thin film. The mean value of the
roughness exponent is , and we show that it can be rationalized
as an effective value in terms of the known universal values corresponding to
the depinning and thermal cases. In addition, it is shown that the roughness
amplitude presents a significant increase with decreasing field. These results
contribute to the description of domain wall motion in disordered thin magnetic
systems.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure
Impact of growth conditions on the domain nucleation and domain wall propagation in Pt/Co/Pt stacks
Understanding the effect of fabrication conditions on domain wall (DW) motion in thin films with perpendicular magnetization is a mandatory issue in order to tune their properties aiming to design spintronics devices based on such phenomenon. In this context, the present work intends to show how different growth conditions may affect DW motion in the prototypical system Pt/Co/Pt. The trilayers were deposited by dc sputtering, and the parameters varied in this study were the Co thickness, the substrate roughness and the base pressure in the deposition chamber. Magneto-optical Kerr effect-based magnetometry and microscopy combined with x-ray reflectometry, atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy were adopted as experimental techniques. This permitted us to elucidate the impact on the hysteresis loops and on the DW dynamics, produced by different growth conditions. As other authors, we found that Co thickness is strongly determinant for both the coercive field and the DW velocity. On the contrary, the topographic roughness of the substrate and the base pressure of the deposition chamber evidence a selective impact on the nucleation of magnetic domains and on DW propagation, respectively, providing a tool to tune these properties. </p
Ferroelastic Domain Walls in BiFeO3 as Memristive Networks
Electronic conduction along individual domain walls (DWs) is reported in BiFeO3 (BFO) and other nominally insulating ferroelectrics. DWs in these materials separate regions of differently oriented electrical polarization (domains) and are just a few atoms wide, providing self-assembled nanometric conduction paths. Herein, it is shown that electronic transport is possible also from wall-to-wall through the dense network of as-grown DWs in BFO thin films. Electric field cycling at different points of the network, performed locally by conducting atomic force microscopy (cAFM), induces resistive switching selectively at the DWs, both for vertical (single wall) and lateral (wall-to-wall) conduction. These findings are the first step toward investigating DWs as memristive networks for information processing and in-materio computing
Ferroelastic domain walls in BiFeO3 as memristive networks
With the provided raw data, the figures of the ArXiv preprint and the Advanced Intelligent systems publication can be reproduced. It consists of the following data types:
- scanning probe microscopy data (.spm and .ibw), which can be opened with the freeware Gwyddion for example
- current (I) vs voltage (V) data (.dat), which can be opened with every conventional data analysis software
- image data (.png), taken by an optical microscope
- Finite element simulation files (.mph), which can be opened using the COMSOL software
- program code (.py) for a graph model simulation, which can be opened and run using any python programming environment
The data is ordered according to the order of appearance in the manuscript