Improvement of Hafnium Oxide Resistive Memory Performance Through Low-Temperature Supercritical Oxidation Treatments

This research investigates one of the process or element doping methods used to enhance the reliability of resistive random access memory (RRAM). A supercritical fluid process combines the advantages of the high permeability of gas with the solubility of liquids, and this novel process introduces water molecules into the supercritical fluid for oxidation in order to improve the resistance of random storage. In terms of reliability of the memory, while previous research has used an oxygen plasma treatment to improve RRAM device performance, this work performed a comparison of the two methods and found that the supercritical oxidation treatment can reduce the forming voltage by 25% and produce superior electrical operation, with an endurance test exhibiting an increase to 10
⁸
cycles and an improvement of 10
²
. The material analysis confirmed that, during the resistance switching process, the switching layer was more oxidized after this novel supercritical oxidation, resulting in the reduction of operating current and improved reliability compared with the plasma oxidation device.