Endurance improvement due to rapid thermal annealing (RTA) of a TaO (x) thin film in an oxygen ambient

Abstract

As the device size is scaled down, the physical size limit is an issue that limits conventional chargebased memories. Thus, many academic studies have focused on investigating alternative non-volatile memories (NVMs). One NVM candidate is a resistive random access memory (RRAM), which has a simple structure and can be densified with a crossbar array structure. The resistive-switching characteristic of the Pt/annealed-TaO (x) /TiN structure was investigated in this research. Annealing at 300A degrees C in an oxygen ambient changed the phase of the TaO (x) layer from TaO2-y to Ta2O5-z . We investigated this change by using X-ray diffraction. The Ta2O5 thin layer, which was formed by annealing, produced a reliable conducting filament in the annealed-TaO (x) layer and improved the device characteristics.