Electrothermal Modeling and Simulation of Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) with Different Resistive Switching Oxides

Electrothermal performance of Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM) composed of five different resistive switching oxides is studied numerically in this paper. Finite element method-based parallel computing simulator is employed to conduct the electrothermal simulation of both RRAM cell and array. Simulation results indicate that NiO and ZrOx RRAMs generate higher heat than HfOx, TiOx and ZnOx RRAMs, as their electric conductivity are higher in the same voltage. During the reset, ZnOx RRAM requires lower voltage to be transferred into high-resistance state due to its higher oxygen vacancy drift rate. The heat crosstalk problem in RRAM array is also investigated, which can decrease reliability during the reset of RRAM. Inactive cells can be transferred into high-resistance state unintentionally with stored information lost. In the same voltage, both HfOx and TiOx RRAMs are less affected by heat crosstalk due to their lower oxygen vacancy drift rate.