Physical Guiding Principles for High Quality Resistive Random Access Memory Stack with Al2O3 Insertion Layer

We theoretically clarified the atomistic role of the Al2O3 oxygen vacancy (VO) barrier layer in advanced ReRAM stacks. We found that VO filament formation in Al2O3 can be controlled by applying voltage when the Al2O3 layer is in contact with VO source layer such as Hf, although VO formation in Al2O3 is difficult in usual situation. Moreover, we proposed a physical guiding principle toward designing high quality ReRAM stacks with Al2O3 VO barrier layers.