Multiterminal Memristive Nanowire Devices for Logic and Memory Applications: A Review

Memristive devices have the potential for a complete renewal of the electron devices landscape, including memory, logic, and sensing applications. This is especially true when considering that the memristive functionality is not limited to two-terminal devices, whose practical realization has been demonstrated within a broad range of different technologies. For electron devices, the memristive functionality can be generally attributed to a material state modification, whose dynamics can be engineered to target a specific application. In this review paper, we show that trap charging dynamics can explain some of the memristive effects previously reported for Schottky-barrier field-effect Si nanowire transistors (SB SiNW FETs). Moreover, the SB SiNW FETs do show additional memristive functionality due to trap charging at the metal/semiconductor surface. The combination of these two memristive effects into multiterminal metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) devices gives rise to new opportunities for both memory and logic applications as well as new sensors based on the physical mechanism that originate memristance. In the special case of four-terminal memristive Si nanowire devices, which are presented for the first time in this paper, enhanced functionality is demonstrated. Finally, the multiterminal memristive devices presented here have the potential of a very high integration density, and they are suitable for hybrid complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) cofabrication with a CMOS-compatible process.