Title :
Impact of hydrogen on the electroforming of Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 resistance-change memory devices
Author :
Tendulkar, Mihir P. ; Jameson, John R. ; Griffin, Peter B. ; McVittie, James P. ; Nishi, Yoshio
Author_Institution :
Paul Allen Center for Integrated Syst., Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA, USA
Abstract :
The effect of hydrogen on the electroforming of thin films of RF-sputtered Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3 (PCMO) was studied. We sputtered a series of samples with 0% to 5% H2 in the 9:1 Ar:O2 sputtering plasma. During constant-voltage forming, a large transient current was observed in the samples sputtered in H-containing plasma. The integrated charge of this step response correlates with the signal intensity of metal-OH bonds in ATR-FTIR scans. It is suggested that the transient component of the step response represents an ionic current due to mobile H+ ions. An in-situ hydrogen barrier layer, 5 nm of Al2O3, was evaluated on PCMO films sputtered with 0% and 1% hydrogen in the plasma. The comparison demonstrates that both controlling hydrogen and encapsulation are necessary to improve device-to-device reproducibility.
Keywords :
electroforming; integrated circuit manufacture; praseodymium compounds; random-access storage; sputter deposition; ATR-FTIR scans; Pr0.7Ca0.3MnO3; RF-sputtered; electroforming; hydrogen effect; resistance-change memory devices; thin films; Anisotropic magnetoresistance; Argon; Electrodes; Hydrogen; Nonvolatile memory; Plasma devices; Plasma measurements; Random access memory; Sputtering; Voltage; PCMO; RRAM; forming; hydrogen;
Conference_Titel :
Non-Volatile Memory Technology Symposium (NVMTS), 2009 10th Annual
Conference_Location :
Portland, OR
Print_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4953-8
Electronic_ISBN :
978-1-4244-4954-5
DOI :
10.1109/NVMT.2009.5429776
