Resistive switching in copper oxide nanorods: a bottom up approach applicable for enhanced scalability

Reversible, stable and reproducible resistive switching in a parallel network of Cu2O nanorods, observed in the present study, highlights the advantages of using nanorods in comparison to normally used thin films. Unipolar and symmetric current-voltage characteristics of the metal/insulator/metal structure consisting of Hg top contact/Copper oxide (Cu2O) nanorods/Ag bottom contact in a sandwich configuration shows electroforming at about 11 V, reproducible reset and set points at 0.53 +/- 0.03 and 4.2 +/- 0.02 V and a high OFF/ON resistance ratio > 10(3). Slope of current-voltage characteristics and current contrast in CAFM mapping indicate that filamentary conduction mechanism is responsible for resistive switching. This study sets the foundation for fabricating a nanorods based resistive random access memory device and thus a manifold increase in the device scalability.