In situ Investigation of Individual Filament Growth in Conducting Bridge Memristor by Contact Scanning Capacitance Microscopy

We report on the application of Contact Scanning Capacitance Microscopy (CSCM) to trace the growth of an individual Ni filament in a ZrO2(Y) film on a Ni sublayer (together with a conductive Atomic Force Microscope probe composing a nanometer-sized virtual memristor). An increasing of the filament length in the course of electro-forming results in an increasing of the capacitance between the probe and the sample, which can be detected by CSCM technique. This way, the filament growth can be monitored in real time in situ.