Oxygen-induced bi-modal failure phenomenon in SiOx-based resistive switching memory

The ambient gas effect in SiOx-based resistive switching memory has been studied. After the electroforming process, resistive switching behavior functions in vacuum as well as in nitrogen without dramatic degradation. However, introducing an oxygen-nitrogen ambient suppresses resistive switching behavior at pressures above 1 Torr. Resistive switching is fully reestablished in oxygen-exposed devices after a vacuum recovery step. The failure phenomena can be described by Monte Carlo simulation using bi-modal statistics to enable feature distribution modeling of failure modes. Design criteria and guidelines are identified for packaging of future oxygen-sensor and of nonvolatile memory applications. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.