A study on low-power, nanosecond operation and multilevel bipolar resistance switching in Ti/ZrO2/Pt nonvolatile memory with 1T1R architecture

Low-power, bipolar resistive switching (RS) characteristics in the Ti/ZrO2/Pt nonvolatile memory with one transistor and one resistor (1T1R) architecture were reported. Multilevel storage behavior was observed by modulating the amplitude of the MOSFET gate voltage, in which the transistor functions as a current limiter. Furthermore, multilevel storage was also executed by controlling the reset voltage, leading the resistive random access memory (RRAM) to the multiple metastable low resistance state (LRS). The experimental results on the measured electrical properties of the various sized devices confirm that the RS mechanism of the Ti/ZrO2/Pt structure obeys the conducting filaments model. In application, the devices exhibit high-speed switching performances (250 ns) with suitable high/low resistance state ratio (HRS/LRS > 10). The LRS of the devices with 10 year retention ability at 80 degrees C, based on the Arrhenius equation, is also demonstrated in the thermal accelerating test. Furthermore, the ramping gate voltage method with fixed drain voltage is used to switch the 1T1R memory cells for upgrading the memory performances. Our experimental results suggest that the ZrO2-based RRAM is a prospective alternative for nonvolatile multilevel memory device applications.