Current silicon-based flash memories consisting of a metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect-transistor with an additional floating gate in each memory cell need to be scaled down to increase their storage capacity. However, flash memories are expected to reach their scaling limitation in the future. Among the emerging memories, resistive switching memory (ReRAM) in particular has attracted much attention in recent times owing to its fast switching, simple structure, and non-volatility. Flexible and transparent electronic devices have also attracted considerable attention for making future electronic devices.

Reporting in Nanotechnology, researchers from the Display and Nanosystem (DIANA, Korea University) and Organic Nano DEVice (ONDEV, Dongguk University) laboratory groups investigate future emerging memory technologies that are transparent and flexible while having good I-V characteristics. The researchers fabricate flexible and transparent ReRAM (FT-ReRAM) which has an averaged 80% transmittance in the visible region (400-800nm). Severe bending of the device also does not affect the memory performance thanks to IZO electrodes and the thin insulator layer.

This research also offers an insight into fabricating FT-ReRAM as well as an explanation as to the ReRAM mechanism, using XPS data, Ohmic conduction, and the Poole-Frenkel mechanism. In the ReRAM mechanism, oxygen vacancies are an important part of the resistive change as they act as traps for injected electrons during the set process. When negative direction voltage is applied to the ReRAM, the oxygen ions migrate from the interface and fill the oxygen vacancies, this is the so-called reset process.

From this new research on emerging memory technologies, we believe that future electronic devices using them are not so far away. Finally, we can solve the current silicon-based flash memories scaling problem by using these approaches high-quality memory functions.

By: DocMemory
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