Thermal stable and low current complementary resistive switch with limited Cu source in amorphous carbon

In this Letter, we report a complementary resistive switch (CRS) with good thermal stability and low ON current. The device is constructed with a bilayer structure composed of sputtered amorphous carbon (a-C) and thermal annealed Cu doped a-C (a-C:Cu). The Cu atoms in a-C:Cu can agglomerate to form nanosized active electrodes by thermal annealing. The Cu species can migrate and redistribute to form conductive filaments within the a-C and a-C:Cu layer through an electrochemical redox reaction. The depletion of Cu species in the a-C:Cu or a-C layer produces complementary resistive switching behaviors. Benefiting from the high thermal stability of a-C and a-C:Cu, the device works stable at a high temperature of up to 300 °C with an endurance of 104 switching cycle and narrow cycle-to-cycle distribution of threshold voltages. Furthermore, the effects of the Cu content in the a-C:Cu layer and the thickness ratio of a-C:Cu/a-C on the ON state current were studied. By limiting the content of Cu in the a-C:Cu layer, a low ON state current of 5 μA was obtained, which is among the lowest in the reported CRSs. Furthermore, a “stateful” material implication logic with the “0” and “1” states represented by a distinct combination of the resistance of each layer was implemented. The CRS is a potential and promising device for low power memory/computing applications and harsh electronics.