Fabrication of printed memory device having zinc-oxide active nano-layer and investigation of resistive switching

An all printed resistive memory device, a 9-bit memristor, has been presented in this study consisting of 3 x 3 memristor crossbars deposited via electrohydrodynamic inkjet printing process at room conditions. Transparent zinc oxide active nano-layers, directly deposited by electrospray process, are sandwiched between the crossbars to complete the metal-insulator metal structure consisting of copper -zinc oxide-silver, where Cu and Ag are used as bottom and top electrodes respectively. The 9-bit memristor device has been characterized using current-voltage measurements to investigate the resistive switching phenomenon thereby confirming the memristive pinched hysteresis behavior signifying the read-write and memory characteristics. The memristor device showed a current bist-ability due to the existence of metal-oxide layer which gives rise to oxygen vacancies upon receiving the positive voltage hence breaking down into doped and un-doped regions and a charge transfer takes place. The maximum ON/OFF ratio of the current bi-stability for the fabricated memristor was as large as 1 x 10(3), and the endurance of ON/OFF switchings was verified for 500 read-write cycles. The metal-insulator-metal structure has been characterized using X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and scanning electron microscope techniques. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.