Atomically Thin Femtojoule Memristive Device

Huan Zhao, Zhipeng Dong, He Tian, Don DiMarzi, Myung Geun Han, Lihua Zhang, Xiaodong Yan, Fanxin Liu, Lang Shen, Shu Jen Han, Steve Cronin, Wei Wu, Jesse Tice, Jing Guo, Han Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

153 Scopus citations

Abstract

The morphology and dimension of the conductive filament formed in a memristive device are strongly influenced by the thickness of its switching medium layer. Aggressive scaling of this active layer thickness is critical toward reducing the operating current, voltage, and energy consumption in filamentary-type memristors. Previously, the thickness of this filament layer has been limited to above a few nanometers due to processing constraints, making it challenging to further suppress the on-state current and the switching voltage. Here, the formation of conductive filaments in a material medium with sub-nanometer thickness formed through the oxidation of atomically thin two-dimensional boron nitride is studied. The resulting memristive device exhibits sub-nanometer filamentary switching with sub-pA operation current and femtojoule per bit energy consumption. Furthermore, by confining the filament to the atomic scale, current switching characteristics are observed that are distinct from that in thicker medium due to the profoundly different atomic kinetics. The filament morphology in such an aggressively scaled memristive device is also theoretically explored. These ultralow energy devices are promising for realizing femtojoule and sub-femtojoule electronic computation, which can be attractive for applications in a wide range of electronics systems that desire ultralow power operation.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1703232
JournalAdvanced Materials
Volume29
Issue number47
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 20 2017
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported by the Army Research Office (Grant No. W911NF-16-1-0435), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research FATE MURI program (Grant No. FA9550-15-1-0514), and the National Science Foundation (Grant Nos. CCF-1618038 and CCF-1618762). The work at Brookhaven National Laboratory was supported by the US DOE Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Sciences and Engineering Division, as well as the Center for Functional Nanomaterials which is US DOE Office of Science Facilities, operated at Brookhaven National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-SC0012704. This research was supported in part by the Department of Energy (DOE) Award No. DE-FG02-07ER46376 (L.S).

Keywords

  • 2D materials
  • femtojoules
  • hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN)
  • memory
  • memristors
  • ultra-low power

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