Low-Power and Nanosecond Switching in Robust Hafnium Oxide Resistive Memory With a Thin Ti Cap

The memory performance of hafnium oxide (HfOx)-based resistive memory containing a thin reactive Ti buffer layer can be greatly improved. Due to the excellent ability of Ti to absorb oxygen atoms from the HfOx film after post-metal annealing, a large amount of oxygen vacancies are left in the HfOx layer of the TiN/Ti/HfOx/TiN stacked layer. These oxygen vacancies are crucial to make a memory device with a stable bipolar resistive switching behavior. Aside from the benefits of low operation power and large on/off ratio (> 100), this memory also exhibits reliable switching endurance (> 10(6) cycles), robust resistance states (200 degrees C), high device yield (similar to 100%), and fast switching speed (< 10 ns).