Plasma-Induced Nonvolatile Resistive Switching with Extremely Low SET Voltage in TiO_xF_y with AgF Nanoparticles

Low power consumption is crucial for the application of resistive random access memory. In this work, we present the bipolar resistive switching in an Ag/TiO_xF_y/Ti/Pt stack with extremely low switch-on voltage of 0.07 V. Operating current as low as 10 nA was also obtained by conductive atomic force microscopy. The highly defective TiO_xF_y layer was fabricated by plasma treatment using helium, oxygen, and carbon tetrafluoride orderly. During the electroforming process, AgF nanoparticles were formed due to the diffusion of Ag⁺ which reacted with the adsorbed F^- in the TiO_xF_y layer. These nanoparticles are of great importance to resistive switching performance because they are believed to be conductive phases and become part of the conducting path when the sample is switched to a low-resistance state.