Rapid thermal annealing effect on resistive switching in Pt/Si3N4/Ti cells

Resistive switching random access memory (ReRAM) is strong candidate for future non-volatile memories due to its high density integration, long retention time, and fast switching speed. A two-terminal passive array of crossbar frameworks consists of a set of electrically resistive switching (RS) elements which is sandwiched between perpendicular bottom and top electrodes. RS can be classified into two types (unipolar, and bipolar RS) based on electric polarity dependence on the sign of the applied voltage. To obtain two stable resistance states, namely, high resistance state (HRS) and low resistance state (LRS), it is applied `Set´ bias to switch from HRS to LRS, and `Reset´ bias from LRS to HRS. RS that could be accomplished without changing the bias polarity is called unipolar RS (URS). On the contrary, opposite polarities are required for bipolar RS (BRS). Recently, there were report about the improvement on endurance and data retention of an Au/Si₃N₄/Ti cell by hydrogen-post-annealing.