Our results will help to understand how a new type of ruthenium-based memory cell can be significantly improved.
An increase in the thickness of its film leads to an increase in the roughness of the electrode surface, while areas of local concentration of the electric field are formed on the slopes of the grains.This significantly improves the key characteristics of memristors and gives hope that in the future memory devices will behave better performance and reliability.Andrey Markeev, Head of the Atomic Layer Deposition Group, MIPT
Recall that memristors are resistors that can remember the information received.They differ from conventional resistors in that the resistance of the memristor depends on theIt is this property that gives the currentthe ability of the memristor to remember and modify previously recorded data.
However there is a problem:Memristors cannot withstand more than several hundred write cycles and lose their properties. Russian scientists tried to solve this problem with the help of ruthenium, a metal from the platinum group, which does not have such compatibility problems. Another property that makes ruthenium stand out is its Electrodes can be produced using the atomic layer deposition method, which allows flexible control of 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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