Bi‐Stable Resistance Generation Mechanism for Oxygenated Amorphous Carbon‐Based Resistive Random‐Access Memory

AbstractThe oxygenated amorphous carbon (α‐COx)‐based resistive random‐access memory (ReRAM) generates a bi‐stable resistance via electroforming or the rupture of the conductive CC sp2 covalent bond filaments in the α‐COx resistive layer, which can be determined by the dependency of the intensity distribution of the oxygen ion (O2−), for the 3D cross‐point nonvolatile memory as the new memory hierarchical structure for an artificial neural network. The conductive CC sp2 and insulating CC sp3 covalent bonds are formed near the top of the resistive layer by drifting and diffusing O2− toward the bottom and top parts of the layer in the set and reset processes, respectively. The reset process has a different bi‐stable resistance generation mechanism from binary metal oxide‐based ReRAM and conductive bridge random‐access memory. The conductive CC sp2 covalent bond intensity in the α‐COx resistive layer affects the forming voltage and the write and erase endurance cycle of the α‐COx‐based ReRAM cells. The result shows that a lower proportion of conductive CC sp2 covalent bond leads to longer write and erase endurance cycles.