Analysis of current compliance on resistive switching of silver programmable metallization cells with stacked SiOx/SiO2 solid electrolytes

The influence of current compliance (I_CC) on resistive switching (RS) of silver programmable metallization cells (Ag-PMCs) with stacked SiO_x/SiO₂ solid electrolytes has been investigated by carrier transportation and capacitance-voltage measurements. The low I_CC of 10 μA leads to the superior multilevel RS characteristics because of a locally discontinuous conductive filament within the stacked solid electrolytes. Possible RS mechanisms of Ag-PMCs with different I_CC are proposed according to the electrical analyses. Thus, the stacked-solid-electrolyte Ag-PMCs are considered as the promising candidate for future high-density nonvolatile memory application.