Thermal Modeling of Resistive Switching Devices

A Fourier series-based model is developed for the problem of heat conduction in a geometry composed of an insulator between two metallic electrodes, with multiple cuboidal heat sources within the insulator. This forms a useful thermal model of a resistive switching device with one or more conductive filaments serving as elements of state. Such a device in is the ON state if and only if a filament nearly or fully bridges the gap between the two electrodes, and is in the OFF state otherwise. The results of the model are compared with the finite element method simulations. By reducing the simulation time for the thermal part of the problem, coupled thermal-ionic-electronic simulations are made more computationally efficient, which helps accelerate device optimization by exploring the parameter space more rapidly.