Impact of Temperature on the Resistive Switching Behavior of Embedded hbox HfO 2 -Based RRAM Devices

Back-end-of-line integrated hbox 1 hbox 1 Unknown character mu hbox m 2 Unknown character hbox TiN / HfO 2 / break hbox Ti / TiN MIM memory devices in a 0.25- mu hbox m complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology were built to investigate the conduction mechanism and the resistive switching behavior as a function of temperature. The temperature-dependent I - V characteristics in fresh devices are attributed to the Poole-Frenkel mechanism with an extracted trap energy level at phi approximately hbox 0.2 Unknown character hbox eV below the hbox HfO 2 conduction band. The trap level is associated with positively charged oxygen vacancies. The electroformed memory cells show a stable bipolar switching behavior in the temperature range from 213-413 K. The off -state current increases with temperature, whereas the on-state current can be described by a weak metallic behavior. Furthermore, the results suggest that the I - V cycling not only induces significant changes in the electrical properties of the MIM memory devices, i.e., the increase in the off-state current, but also stronger temperature dependence. The temperature effect on the on-state and off-state characteristics is modeled within the framework of the quantum point-contact model for dielectric breakdown using an effective temperature-dependent confinement potential.