Trade-off between variability and retention of memristive epitaxial SrTiO$_{3}$ devices

Abstract

We present a study of the trade-off between the retention and variability of SrTiO3-based memristive devices. We identified the applied switching current and the device stoichiometry as main influence factors. We show that the SrO formation at the electrode interface, which has been revealed to improve the device retention significantly, is associated with an increased cycle-to-cycle and device-to-device variability. On the other hand, devices with homogeneous, Ti-terminated SrTiO3–Pt interfaces exhibit poor retention but the smallest variability. These results give valuable insights for the application of memristive SrTiO3 devices as non-volatile memory or in neural networks, where the control of variability is of key relevance.We acknowledge funding from the W2/W3 program of the Helmholtz Association. This research was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (Grant No. SFB 917 “Nanoswitches”), the Helmholtz Association Initiative and Networking Fund under Project No. SO-092 (Advanced Computing Architectures, ACA), and the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Project NEUROTEC, Grant No. 16ES1133K)