An oxygen vacancy memristor ruled by electron correlations

Resistive switching effects offer new opportunities in the field of conventional memories as well as in the booming area of neuromorphic computing. The tunneling electroresistance, usually observed in ferroelectric tunnel junctions, allows for large and fast resistance variations triggered by voltage pulses. We have recently demonstrated that similar tunnel resistance switching effects can be produced in judiciously chosen metal/oxide junctions by an electrochemical (redox) mechanism (1).

Here we show that this mechanism can be exploited in junctions based on NdNiO3, an interesting material due to its first-order metal-insulator transition that adds an additional degree of freedom to the studied devices. We find that the studied NdNiO3/MoSi junctions present large tunnel electroresistance, and that, depending on the temperature, the lifetime of the resistance states can be largely tuned. Furthermore, the resistance switching is accompanied by a shift of the metal-insulator transition temperature, which further supports the redox scenario in presence of strong electronic correlations.

This work was published in Humbert, V. et al. An Oxygen Vacancy Memristor Ruled by Electron Correlations. Advanced Science, 2201753 (2022)

(1) Rouco, V., et al. Quasiparticle tunnel electroresistance in superconducting junctions. Nature communications, 11(1), 1-9 (2020)

*This project was supported by the ERC grant 647100 SUSPINTRONICS, the ANR grant ANR-22-CE24-0009-01 SEEDS and received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101029978.