Excellent high temperature retention of TiOxNy ReRAM by interfacial layer engineering

Since the resistance switching of the transition metal oxide (TMO) resistive random access memory (ReRAM) is based on the interaction between the oxygen ions and vacancies, the unintentional oxygen/vacancy reaction should be avoided during data retention. This work demonstrates significant improvements on the retention performance by inserting a Si layer in the TiO
_x
N
_y
ReRAM to block the diffusion of oxygen ions through the Ti/TiO
_x
N
_y
interface. The mechanism and factors that influenced the HRS and LRS retention are also studied. The retention performance of HRS is correlated with its RESET level while the LRS retention depends on the programming current. The proposed Ti/Si/TiO
_x
N
_y
ReRAMs can switch for more than 10
³
cycles from array testing results.