Peroxide induced volatile and non-volatile switching behavior in ZnO-based electrochemical metallization memory cell

We explore the use of cubic-zinc peroxide (ZnO₂) as a switching material for electrochemical metallization memory (ECM) cell. The ZnO₂ was synthesized with a simple peroxide surface treatment. Devices made without surface treatment exhibits a high leakage current due to the self-doped nature of the hexagonal-ZnO material. Thus, its switching behavior can only be observed when a very high current compliance is employed. The synthetic ZnO₂ layer provides a sufficient resistivity to the Cu/ZnO₂/ZnO/ITO devices. The high resistivity of ZnO₂ encourages the formation of a conducting bridge to activate the switching behavior at a lower operation current. Volatile and non-volatile switching behaviors with sufficient endurance and an adequate memory window are observed in the surface-treated devices. The room temperature retention of more than 10⁴ s confirms the non-volatility behavior of the devices. In addition, our proposed device structure is able to work at a lower operation current among other reported ZnO-based ECM cells.