Reliable Control of Filament Formation in Resistive Memories by Self-Assembled Nanoinsulators Derived from a Block Copolymer

Resistive random access memory (ReRAM) is a promising candidate for future nonvolatile memories. Resistive switching in a metal insulator metal structure is generally assumed to be caused by the formation/rupture of nanoscale conductive filaments (CFs) under an applied electric field. The critical issue of ReRAM for practical memory applications, however, is insufficient repeatability of the operating voltage and resistance ratio. Here, we present an innovative approach to reliably and reproducibly control the CF growth in unipolar NiO resistive memory by exploiting uniform formation of insulating SiOx nanostructures from the self-assembly of a Si-containing block copolymer. In this way, the standard deviation (SD) of set and reset voltages was markedly reduced by 76.9% and 59.4%, respectively. The SD of high resistance state also decreased significantly, from 63 x 10(7) Omega to 5.4 x 104 Omega. Moreover, we report direct observations of localized metallic Ni CF formation and their controllable growth using electron microscopy and discuss electrothermal simulation results based on the finite element method supporting our analysis results.