Effects of heavy ion irradiation on Cu/Al2O3/Pt CBRAM devices

Abstract In this work, the effects of heavy ion irradiation on atomic switches with Cu/Al2O3/Pt structure are investigated. The initial device is prone to hard breakdown after forming, while the device after irradiation exhibits good performance such as stable operating voltage, non-volatile switching (a retention characteristic of 105 s at room temperature) and good endurance (2000 switching cycles). Compared with the device after low-dose irradiation, the device under higher-dose irradiation shows more uniform off-state resistances but no relevant changes were observed on distributions of on-state resistances, set and reset voltages.