Rectifying switching characteristics of Pt/ZnO/Pt structure based resistive memory

40 nm thick amorphous ZnO thin films were deposited by radio frequency magnetron sputtering at room temperature and asymmetric electrical switching characteristics are observed in the macroscopic symmetric Pt/ZnO/Pt structure. The crystal structure was examined by X-ray diffraction (XRD). The chemical bonding states of ZnO resistive switching layer was investigated by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Keithley 4200 semiconductor characterization system was used to measure the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics of the fabricated devices. The results reveal that a reversible resistive switching behavior between the high resistance state and the low resistance state with rectifying effects can be repeated for more than 100 dc cycles. This asymmetric electrical behavior is thought to be related to the naturally self-formed PtOx between ZnO film and the Pt bottom electrode, which introduces an energy barrier when electrons flow from top electrode towards the bottom electrode. The model of Pt/ZnO/Pt memory cell is expected to be able to alleviate the misreading error in cross-point array for high density integrations.