Physicists were able to seriously extend the life of artificial analogs of neurons

Our results will help to understand how a new type of memory cells based on ruthenium can be significantly improved.

An increase in its film thickness leads toan increase in the roughness of the electrode surface, while on the slopes of the grains, regions of local concentration of the electric field are formed. This significantly improves the key characteristics of memristors and gives hope that memory devices will have better performance and reliability in the future.

Andrey Markeev, Head of the Atomic Layer Deposition Group, MIPT

Recall that memristors are resistors thatcan remember the information received. They differ from ordinary resistors in that the resistance of the memristor depends on how the current passed through it before. It is this property that gives the memristor the ability to memorize and modify previously recorded data.

However, there is a problem: memristors cannot withstand more than a few hundred write cycles and lose their properties. Russian scientists have tried to solve this problem with ruthenium, a metal from the platinum group that does not have such compatibility problems. Another property that gives off ruthenium is that its electrodes can be obtained by atomic layer deposition, which allows flexible control over their size and three-dimensional shape.

Physicists tried to grow ruthenium electrodesof different thicknesses and shapes on the surface of a titanium nitride film is one of the traditional components of memristors. After that, it was combined with a thallium oxide layer and monitored how changes in the structure and thickness of the electrode affected the properties of the entire memory cell as a whole.

Such a device can survive tens of millions of read and write cycles. Physicists hope that their development will help accelerate the development of memristor electronics.

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