Unveiling Root Cause of Defect Assisted Filamentation and Implication on Resistive Switching in MoS2 Atomristor

Despite atomristors enable possibility of ultra-low power non-volatile resistive memory, the underlying physics of resistive switching in these devices has remained unclear. This work presents local behavior of various point defects in monolayer
$MoS_{2}$
atomristor using Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations. It is observed that Au atom adsorption at sulfur monovacancy deteriorates the electron injection into atomristor. On the contrary, Au atom adsorption at di-sulfur vacancy reduces tunnelling barrier and width around the defect at both interfaces whereby the adsorbed Au atom acts as a conductive point bridge for low resistive path as observed experimentally also in the previous works.