Scalability of PCMO-based resistive switch device in DSM technologies

This work systematically explores the relationship between the resistive switching properties of Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 (PCMO) thin film element and its geometry dimensions in deep submicron (DSM) technologies. A series of PCMO-based resistive switch devices (RSDs) with different geometry sizes were fabricated. Our E-test results show that by reducing the PCMO layer thickness from the normal value of about 200nm to 30nm, a low switching voltage (within ±2.5V) can be achieved. The reduction of PCMO layer thickness does not incur visible impact on device reliability: no significant degradation of two resistance states was observed after 1500 programming cycles. Based on the extrapolation from the measured electrical parameters of PCMO-based devices, we analyzed the design requirements of PCMO-based resistive memory with different cell structures in sub-100nm technologies. Our simulations show that one-transistor-one-RSD (1T1R) cell structure can be successfully scaled down to 22nm technology node. However, the scaling of one-non-ohmicdevice-one-RSD (1N1R) cell structure is significantly limited by the low driving ability of current non-ohmic device technology. ©2010 IEEE.