| AVS 59th Annual International Symposium and Exhibition | |
| Electron Transport at the Nanoscale Focus Topic | Thursday Sessions |
| Session ET+NS+EM-ThM |
| Session: | Electron Transport at the Nanoscale: Nanowires and Junctions |
| Presenter: | P.R. Mickel, Sandia National Laboratories |
| Authors: | P.R. Mickel, Sandia National Laboratories M. Marinella, Sandia National Laboratories C.D. James, Sandia National Laboratories |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
We present evidence of the identification and characterization of a new state variable in TaOx memristors. Thus far, the state variable controlling the resistive switching has been believed to be the oxygen concentration in the conducting Ta filament. However, using voltage pulse measurements sensitive to small changes in resistance, we shown that the changing area of the conducting filament is in fact the dominant switching mechanism. The oxygen concentration in the Ta filament is shown to control the memristor resistance for low resistances, after which we observe a clear crossover to the area state variable dominated resistance range. Voltage and temperature dependence are investigated for the switching time-scales, $\tau$, and magnitudes of filament area change, providing insight into their driving mechanisms and the resolution limits of their modulation.