Effect of crystalline state on conductive filaments forming process in resistive switching memory devices

[Display omitted] •The RS memory device with the structure of Ag/CIGS/Mo was assembled.•The RS performance is obviously affected by crystal state of active layer.•The model of crystal state affecting conductive filament forming was demonstrated.•This work provides an operable method to control the memory performance by tuning the crystal state. It is well known that the resistive switching memory is considered as a promising high-performance storage technology to satisfy the demand of information explosion. In this work, the resistive switching memory device with Ag/Cu(In, Ga)Se2/Mo structure was firstly fabricated, and further the influence of Cu(In, Ga)Se2 (CIGS) crystalline state on resistive switching performance was investigated. The results show that the HRS/LRS ratio increased from 1.7 to 8.2 as the CIGS layer transferring from amorphous to crystalline, thus the model of crystal state affecting the conductive filament forming process was demonstrated. This work provides an operable method to control the resistive switching performance by tuning the crystal state.