Suppression of endurance degradation by utilizing oxygen plasma treatment in HfO2 resistive switching memory

Based on the phenomenon of endurance degradation problem caused by no sufficient oxygen ions for resistive switching, we use the oxygen plasma treatment in HfO2 layer to increase the extra available oxygen ions in resistive random access memory devices. To avoid the Ti top electrode directly absorbing the additional oxygen ions from HfO2 layer with oxygen plasma treatment, a thin HfO2 film is inserted to separate them. Therefore, the endurance degradation can be suppressed in the present structure. High speed (30 ns) and large endurance cycles (up to 10(10) cycles) are achieved in this device structure for next generation nonvolatile memory application. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.