Evidence of Al induced conducting filament formation in Al/amorphous silicon/Al resistive switching memory device

We demonstrated that an Al/p-type amorphous silicon (p-a-Si)/Al switching device exhibits stable, nonvolatile resistive switching characteristics as well as reliable data retention at 85 °C. It is directly observed that the conducting filament is created after electroforming and incorporates the top metal migrated or diffused into a-Si layer. In addition, by analyzing the constitution of the conducting filament, we investigated the microscopic nature of the conducting filament. These results suggest that the Al/p-a-Si/Al device has potential for future nonvolatile memory applications.