The effect of the Zr top electrode on the resistive switching behavior of the CeO x film is investigated. It is expected that the Zr top electrode reacts with the CeO x layer and forms an interfacial ZrO y layer. This reaction may be responsible for creating a sufficient amount of oxygen vacancies required for the formation and rupture of conductive filaments for resistive switching. In this study, we have found that the CeO x -based RRAM device exhibits good switching characteristics with reliable endurance and data retention, suitable for future nonvolatile memory applications. Methods A 200-nm-thick silicon dioxide (SiO2) layer
was thermally grown on a (100)-oriented p-type Si wafer substrate. Next, a 50-nm-thick Pt ISRIB datasheet bottom electrode was deposited on a 20-nm-thick Ti layer by electron BAY 1895344 supplier beam evaporation. The 14- to 25-nm-thick CeO x films were PLX3397 in vitro deposited on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si at room temperature with a gas mixture
of 6:18 Ar/O2 by radio-frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering using a ceramic CeO2 target. Prior to rf sputtering at 10-mTorr pressure and 100-W power, the base pressure of the chamber was achieved at 1.2 × 10-6 Torr. Finally, a 30-nm-thick Zr top electrode (TE) and a 20-nm-thick W TE capping layer were deposited by direct current (DC) sputtering on the CeO x film through metal shadow masks having 150-μm diameters to form a sandwich MIM structure. The W layer was used
to avoid the oxidation of the Zr electrode during testing. Structural and compositional characteristics of the CeO x films were analyzed by X-ray diffraction (XRD; Bede D1, Bede PLC, London, UK) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS; ULVAC-PHI Quantera SXM, ULVAC-PHI, Inc., Kanagawa, Japan) measurements. The film thickness and interfacial reaction between Zr and CeO x were confirmed by high-resolution cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). Elemental presence of deposited layers was investigated by energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDX). Electrical current–voltage (I-V) measurement was carried out using the Agilent B1500A (Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA, USA) semiconductor analyzer characterization system at room temperature. During electrical Fludarabine in vitro tests, bias polarity was defined with reference to the Pt bottom electrode. Results and discussion Figure 1a shows the grazing angle (3°) XRD spectra of the CeO x thin film deposited on Si (100) substrate. It indicates that the CeO x film possesses a polycrystalline structure having (111), (200), (220), and (311) peaks, corresponding to the fluorite cubic structure (JCPDS ref. 34–0394). From the XRD analysis, the broad and wide diffraction peaks demonstrate that the CeO x film exhibits poor crystallization. This could be due to the small thickness (approximately 14 nm) of the film.