Impact of a laser pulse on HfO2-based RRAM cells reliability and integrity

Several NVM technologies have emerged during the last 10 years. These technologies offer solutions for the replacement of the Flash technology, which is facing downsizing limits [1]. Moreover these solutions propose lower switching energy and faster operations compared to the state of the art for Flash, and thus, are seen as an opportunity for the rise of the IoT market. But one of the main concerns regarding IoT is the protection of the data. Contrary to Flash, security of the data in emerging NVM is yet to be evaluated. In order to verify capability of the technology in terms of data integrity, we propose to investigate reliability and integrity of HfO
₂
-based Resistive RAM (OxRRAM). This paper details the experimental protocol defined for laser-based attacks, shows that a laser pulse can affect the information stored in a single OxRRAM bit. The occurring phenomenon is then explained by mean of thermal and electrical simulations.