Individual Zn2SnO4-sheathed ZnO heterostructure nanowires for efficient resistive switching memory controlled by interface states

Resistive switching (RS) devices are widely believed as a promising candidate for next generation nonvolatile resistance random access memory. Here, Zn2SnO4-sheathed ZnO core/shell heterostructure nanowires were constructed through a polymeric sol-gel approach followed by post-annealing. The back-to-back bipolar RS properties were observed in the Ohmic contact two-terminal devices based on individual core/shell nanowires. With increasing bias to about 1.5 V, it changes from high-resistance states (HRS) to low-resistance states, and however, it can be restored to HRS by reverse bias. We propose a new mechanism, which is attributed to the injection of electrons into/from interfacial states, arising from the lattice mismatch at ZnO/Zn2SnO4 heterointerface. Upon applying negative/positive voltage at one end of devices, where interfacial states are filled/emptied, barrier will be eliminated/created, resulting into symmetric RS characteristics. The behavior of storage and removal charges demonstrates that the heterostructures have excellent properties for the application in resistance random access memory.