Effect of hipims discharge in metal oxide nanocoatings for resistive random access memory application.

This paper is devoted to the technology and characterization of thin films fabricated by reactive magnetron sputtering using HIPIMS discharge. The metal oxides and nitrides, such as zirconium oxide (ZrOx), titanium oxide (TiOx) or titanium nitride (TiN) play important functions in various structures for novel electronic and photonic devices. This work aims to determine dependencies between the input parameters of the fabrication process and the properties of the obtained materials to obtain ultrathin layers for the application of the MIM (Metal-Insulator-Metal) structures. Those structures are the basis of resistive random-access memory (RRAM) devices. In the first part of this work, the optical properties of layers deposited by HIPIMS were compared to those deposited using a typical pulsed-DC process. In the UV-VIS range, several oxide materials were characterized in terms of thickness, refractive indices, transmittance, and reflectance. The resistive switching properties of the MIM structures with the employed oxide materials depend on the presence of oxygen vacancies in the layer bulk. In order to monitor the stoichiometry of the oxide layers, MIS (Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor) structures are fabricated. The analysis of the obtained electrical characteristics was performed. In the last part of this work, selected processes were used to fabricate MIM devices. The results of the electrical characterization of the fabricated test structures will be described indicating concluding remarks on the feasibility of applying the studied structures in RRAM devices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]