Finding Oxygen Reservoir by Using Extremely Small Test Cell Structure for Resistive Random Access Memory with Replaceable Bottom Electrode

Although the presence of an oxygen reservoir (OR) is assumed in many models that explain resistive switching of resistive random access memory (ReRAM) with electrode/metal oxide (MO)/electrode structures, the location of OR is not clear. We have previously reported a method, which involved the use of an AFM cantilever, for preparing an extremely small ReRAM cell that has a removable bottom electrode (BE). In this study, we used this cell structure to specify the location of OR. Because an anode is often assumed to work as OR, we investigated the effect of changing anodes without changing the MO layer and the cathode on the occurrence of reset. It was found that the reset occurred independently of the catalytic ability and Gibbs free energy (ΔG) of the anode. Our proposed structure enabled to determine that the reset was caused by repairing oxygen vacancies of which a filament consists due to the migration of oxygen ions from the surrounding area when high ΔG anode metal is used, whereas by oxidizing the anode due to the migration of oxygen ions from the MO layer when low ΔG anode metal is used, suggesting the location of OR depends on ΔG of the anode.