Plausible Physical Mechanisms for Unusual Volatile/Non-Volatile Resistive Switching in HfO2-Based Stacks

Memristive devices made of silicon compatible simple oxides are of great interest for storage and logic devices in future adaptable electronics and non-digital computing applications. A series of highly desirable properties observed in an atomic-layer-deposited hafnia-based stack, triggered our interest to investigate their suitability for technological implementations. In this paper, we report our attempts to reproduce the observed behaviour within the framework of a proposed underlying mechanism. The inability of achieving the electrical response of the original batch indicates that a key aspect in those devices has remained undetected. By comparing newly made devices with the original ones, we gather some clues on the plausible alternative mechanisms that could give rise to comparable electrical behaviours.