Synergetic engineering of oxidizable, redox, and inert metal decorated copper oxide for non-volatile memory and neuromorphic computing applications

Abstract In the quest for efficient resistive switching (RS) materials for both non-volatile memory and neuromorphic computing applications, a variety of functional materials have been researched in the last few years. Herein, we systematically synthesized Ni, Ag, and Au decorated copper oxide (Cu x O) by using an electrochemical approach and investigated their RS performance for both non-volatile memory storage and neuromorphic computing applications. By tuning various electrochemical parameters, we optimized Ni, Ag, and Au decoration over the Cu x O switching layers to understand the effect of oxidizable, redox, and inert metal decoration, respectively. Fabricated Ni–Cu x O/FTO, Ag-Cu x O/FTO, and Au–Cu x O/FTO devices show forming-free bipolar and analog properties of RS behavior. The electrical measurements asserted that the electrodeposited Ni–Cu x O/FTO RS device shows excellent RS, non-volatile memory, and synaptic learning properties compared to the Ag–Cu x O/FTO, and Au–Cu x O/FTO devices. Moreover, the statistical and Weibull distribution parameters suggested that the Ni–Cu x O/FTO RS device has lower switching variation than the other two devices. The conduction mechanisms of all devices are investigated by fitting the appropriate physics-oriented models. It was found that Ohmic and Child’s square law were dominated during the charge transport and the RS process occurred due to the filamentary switching effect. Results suggested the electro-decorated/-deposited Ni–Cu x O is a suitable switching layer for memory as well as neuromorphic computing applications.