Effects of ultrathin Al layer insertion on resistive switching performance in an amorphous aluminum oxide resistive memory

We prepared resistive switching Al-AlO_x multilayered junctions and observed considerably improved endurance properties. The mechanism of the observed resistance switching basically reflects the filament model. The temperature dependence of the transport in each resistance state revealed additional features, that is a well-defined thermal activation behavior in the high-resistance state is not observed in the layered device and the metallic conduction in the low-resistance state is not affected. The improved endurance properties are discussed in terms of the increased effective number of active regions, where the Reset and Set processes probably occur before a permanent dielectric breakdown.