A team at the University of California, Riverside, has developed a novel way to build a zinc oxide nano-island on silicon. It eliminates the need for a second element called a selector, which is often a diode. The device is based on the principles of resistive memory, which can be used to create memory cells that are smaller, operate at a higher speed, and offer more storage capacity than flash memory cells, the current industry standard. Terabytes, not gigabytes, will be the norm with resistive memory.
Resistive memory usually has a metal-oxide-metal structure in connection with a selector device. The UC Riverside team has demonstrated a novel alternative way by forming self-assembled zinc oxide nano-islands on silicon. Using a conductive atomic force microscope, the researchers observed three operation modes from the same device structure, essentially eliminating the need for a separate selector device.
The findings were published online in the journal Scientific Reports, which is part of Nature Publishing Group. The paper is called “Multimode Resistive Switching in Single ZnO Nanoisland System.”
“This is a significant step as the electronics industry is considering wide-scale adoption of resistive memory as an alternative for flash memory,” said Jianlin Liu, a professor of electrical engineering at UC Riverside and an author of the paper.
