Effects of Film Orientation on Power Consumption, Thermal Stability, and Reliability of Aluminum Nitride Resistive Random Access Memory Devices

The power consumption (PC), window margin (WM), thermal stability (TS), and reliability [i.e., endurance (EN) and retention-time (RT)] of aluminum nitride (AlN) resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices with different film orientations [i.e., amorphous, (100)- and (002)-oriented] are investigated. It is shown that the charge carrier transport mechanism of the three devices is dominated by Ohmic behavior under low electric fields and the trap-controlled space charge limited current (TC-SCLC) model under high electric fields. Among the three devices, the (002)-oriented AlN sample provides the best overall PC, WM, TS, EN, and RT performance due to its ${c}$ -axis orientation, which is favorable for the formation and rupture of the vertically arranged conductive filaments (CFs) in the AlN film.