Volatile and Non-Volatile Switching in Cu-SiO2 Programmable Metallization Cells

In this letter, we propose a CMOS-compatible selector prototype based on a Cu-SiO
₂
programmable metallization cell. With a porous e-beam evaporated SiO
₂
switching layer, the filament ruptures in less than a millisecond. The device exhibits diode-like I-V characteristics with a selectivity of more than 10
⁷
. This volatile PMC can be changed to a bipolar resistive memory switch if the SiO
₂
switching layer is thermally doped with Cu. Threshold switching is a result of filament dissolution caused by Cu diffusion in SiO
₂
.