Improvement of Resistive Switching Stability of HfO2 Films with Al Doping by Atomic Layer Deposition

Abstract

This study investigates an optimized uniformity of Al-doped HfO2 resistive random access memory (RRAM) device. The Al-doped HfO2 RRAM devices in this study exhibit excellent uniformity and stable resistive switching behavior. This is due to the formation of Hf-O-Al bonding to reduce the oxygen vacancy formation energy. An Arrhenius plot shows that the difference in activation energy caused by doping effects can be attributed to a Fermi level shift, which in turn decreases the resistance of the high resistance state. The temperature-dependent retention test makes it possible to predict the data storage capability of the Al-doped HfO2 resistive RRAM device. © 2012 The Electrochemical Society. [DOI: 10.1149/2.011204esl] All rights reserved.