Uniform and robust TiN/HfO2/Pt memristor through interfacial Al-doping engineering

Abstract Doping and interface engineering are important schemes to address the variation problem which hinders the application of memristors. In this study, combination of doping and interface engineering (interfacial doping) was adopted to improve the performance of TiN/HfO2/Pt memristors. Here, three memristors were designed to systematically investigate the effect of different interfacial Al doping on device performance. The results indicate that TiN/HfO2/HfO2:Al/Pt memristor shows substantially improved uniformity, cycle endurance and resistance state stability compared with the TiN/HfO2/Pt device, while TiN/HfO2:Al/HfO2/Pt shows worse performance than the TiN/HfO2/Pt device. Subsequently, different conductive filament (CF) formation/rupture mechanisms are proposed for devices with different interfacial doping. This study reveals that interfacial doping can improve the device performance of memristor greatly, but its effect on CF formation/rupture is critical.