Conductive filament localization within crossbar resistive memories by Scanning Joule Expansion Microscopy
We have recently demonstrated that Scanning Joule Expansion Microscopy (SJEM) can be used to detect and precisely localize conductive filaments within operating crossbar resistive memories. Flexible CBRAM devices based on Pd/Al2O3/Ag stacks were first elaborated at low temperature on polyimide substrate. Under operation in the low resistance state, the SJEM amplitude images revealed a hot spot underlying the presence of a single conductive filament. An effective thermal diffusion length of 4.3μm was extracted at 50kHz and it was also demonstrated that the thermal expansion signal is proportional to the dissipated Joule power. We believe that the proposed procedure opens the way to reliability studies that can be applied to any family of memory device based on filamentary conduction. This work has been highlighted among five other articles on the cover page of the June issue of IEEE Electron Device Letters.
Ref.: E. Puyoo and D. Albertini, IEEE Electron Device Letters, Vol. 41, No. 6, June 2020
DOI : 10.1109/LED.2020.2986543
