Integration Of Lift-Off Based Lithography Process For Memristor Fabrication

This study introduces a lift-off based process integration scheme for memristor fabrication. Memristors are of promising electronic components for bio-mimicking computers, non-volatile memory devices, etc. The wide-spread use of memristors in electronic systems thoroughly depends on the quality and reproducibility of the fabrication procedure. The lift-off process conventionally combines lithography and sputtering techniques as well as wet processes. Each of these processes requires well-established recipes for a lean fabrication. The structure of our memristor design involves an active memristive layer sandwiched between the top and bottom electrodes. In this study, titanium oxide (TiO
_x
) layer and the electrodes are formed via the lift-off process. Insulator and metal layers are deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering, and lithography is done using a mask aligner. Throughout the process flow, surface structures are characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Current and voltage measurements have been carried out to characterize memristive properties of the fabricated features. Accordingly, the existence of a successful resistive switching mechanism shows the memristive behavior of the fabricated device.