Title: Scalability of Voltage-Controlled Filamentary and Nanometallic Resistance Memories,
Abstract: Much effort has been devoted to device and materials engineering to realize
nanoscale resistance random access memory (RRAM) for practical applications,
but there still lacks a rational physical basis to be relied on to design
scalable devices spanning many length scales. In particular, the critical
switching criterion is not clear for RRAM devices in which resistance changes
are limited to localized nanoscale filaments that experience concentrated heat,
electric current and field. Here, we demonstrate voltage-controlled resistance
switching for macro and nano devices in both filamentary RRAM and nanometallic
RRAM, the latter switches uniformly and does not require forming. As a result,
using a constant current density as the compliance, we have achieved
area-scalability for the low resistance state of the filamentary RRAM, and for
both the low and high resistance states of the nanometallic RRAM. This finding
will help design area-scalable RRAM at the nanoscale.