Origin of stochastic resistive switching in devices with phenomenologically identical initial states

Nanoscale resistive switching devices are nowadays widely employed in applications of storage, logic and computing. The switching mechanism of metal oxide based devices is normally assumed to be the filamentary formation and rupture within the devices´ active cores but the origin of filaments growth is still controversial. Previous research has already demonstrated that initial filamentary states could significantly affect the devices´ switching dynamics and final resistance distributions. Here we demonstrate the relation between pristine resistive states and distribution of filaments via modeling the switching dynamics by utilizing a current percolation circuit. We show that devices with identical initial resistive states could attain distinct plausible filamentary distributions and correspondingly manifest very dissimilar switching dynamics even when biased with similar stimuli.