Nanoscale resistive switching and filamentary conduction in NiO thin films

We fabricate regular arrays of nanoelectrodes on NiO thin films via nanosphere lithography and directly probe the nanoscale resistive switching using a conductive atomic force microscope. The unipolar resistive switching is consistent with the conducting filament formation/rupture mechanism, and the switching power is as low as 10−9 W. We find that only about half of devices are switchable, and the Monte Carlo simulation suggests strong correlations between the switching reliability, the electrode size, and the filament dimension and density.