Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan 28;11(1):2417.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82159-7.

Charge transport mechanism in the forming-free memristor based on silicon nitride

Andrei A Gismatulin  1   2 , Gennadiy N Kamaev  1 , Vladimir N Kruchinin  1 , Vladimir A Gritsenko  1   2   3 , Oleg M Orlov  4   5 , Albert Chin  6
Affiliations

Charge transport mechanism in the forming-free memristor based on silicon nitride

Andrei A Gismatulin et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Nonstoichiometric silicon nitride SiNx is a promising material for developing a new generation of high-speed, reliable flash memory device based on the resistive effect. The advantage of silicon nitride over other dielectrics is its compatibility with the silicon technology. In the present work, a silicon nitride-based memristor deposited by the plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition method was studied. To develop a memristor based on silicon nitride, it is necessary to understand the charge transport mechanisms in all states. In the present work, it was established that the charge transport in high-resistance states is not described by the Frenkel effect model of Coulomb isolated trap ionization, Hill-Adachi model of overlapping Coulomb potentials, Makram-Ebeid and Lannoo model of multiphonon isolated trap ionization, Nasyrov-Gritsenko model of phonon-assisted tunneling between traps, Shklovskii-Efros percolation model, Schottky model and the thermally assisted tunneling mechanisms. It is established that, in the initial state, low-resistance state, intermediate-resistance state and high-resistance state, the charge transport in the forming-free SiNx-based memristor is described by the space charge limited current model. The trap parameters responsible for the charge transport in various memristor states are determined.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Ellipsometric mapping of refractive index n and thickness d of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni memristor structure (hν = 1.96 eV).
Figure 2
Figure 2
I–V characteristics of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni memristor cycles.
Figure 3
Figure 3
(a) Endurance of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni memristor cycles. (b) Retention of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni memristor cycles at 85 °C.
Figure 4
Figure 4
I–V characteristics of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni in VS, IRS, LRS and HRS at different temperatures in a double logarithmic scale.
Figure 5
Figure 5
I–V characteristics and of p+-Si/SiNx/Ni and simulation by SCLC model in (a) VS, (b) LRS, (c) IRS, (d) HRS.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Nasyrov KA, et al. Two-bands charge transport in silicon nitride due to phonon-assisted trap ionization. J. Appl. Phys. 2004;96(4293–4296):2004. doi: 10.1063/1.1790059. - DOI
    1. Gritsenko VA. Silicon Nitride on Si: Electronic Structure for Flash Memory Devices. Singapore: World Scientific Press; 2016. pp. 273–322.
    1. Gritsenko VA, et al. A new low voltage fast SONOS memory with high-k dielectric. Solid State Electron. 2003;47:1651–1656. doi: 10.1016/S0038-1101(03)00174-6. - DOI
    1. Padovani A, et al. Evidences for vertical charge dipole formation in charge-trapping memories and its impact on reliability. Appl. Phys. Lett. 2012;101:053505. doi: 10.1063/1.4740255. - DOI
    1. Zidan MA, Strachan JP, Lu WD. The future of electronics based on memristive systems. Nat. Electron. 2018;1:22–29. doi: 10.1038/s41928-017-0006-8. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources