%0 Electronic Article
%A Völkel, Lukas
%A Braun, Dennis
%A Belete, Melkamu
%A Kataria, Satender
%A Wahlbrink, Thorsten
%A Ran, Ke
%A Kistermann, Kevin
%A Mayer, Joachim
%A Menzel, Stephan
%A Daus, Alwin
%A Lemme, Max C.
%T Resistive Switching and Current Conduction Mechanisms in Hexagonal Boron Nitride Threshold Memristors with Nickel Electrodes
%I arXiv
%M FZJ-2024-00370
%D 2023
%X The two-dimensional (2D) insulating material hexagonal boron nitride (h BN) has attracted much attention as the active medium in memristive devices due to its favorable physical properties, among others, a wide bandgap that enables a large switching window. Metal filament formation is frequently suggested for h-BN devices as the resistive switching (RS) mechanism, usually supported by highly specialized methods like conductive atomic force microscopy (C-AFM) or transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Here, we investigate the switching of multilayer hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) threshold memristors with two nickel (Ni) electrodes through their current conduction mechanisms. Both the high and the low resistance states are analyzed through temperature-dependent current-voltage measurements. We propose the formation and retraction of nickel filaments along boron defects in the h-BN film as the resistive switching mechanism. We corroborate our electrical data with TEM analyses to establish temperature-dependent current-voltage measurements as a valuable tool for the analysis of resistive switching phenomena in memristors made of 2D materials. Our memristors exhibit a wide and tunable current operation range and low stand-by currents, in line with the state of the art in h-BN-based threshold switches, a low cycle-to-cycle variability of 5%, and a large On/Off ratio of 10${^7}$.
%K Applied Physics (physics.app-ph) (Other)
%K Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) (Other)
%K FOS: Physical sciences (Other)
%F PUB:(DE-HGF)25
%9 Preprint
%R 10.48550/ARXIV.2301.10158
%U https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1020894