Controlled Self Compliance Filamentary Memory Behavior in Al/NiFe2O4/FTO Resistive Switching Device

Herein, we report a controlled non-volatile bipolar resistive switching in nanostructured NiFe₂O₄ films using a capacitor like Al(aluminum)/NiFe₂O₄/FTO(fluorine-doped tin oxide) metal–insulator-metal device, which shows uniform resistive switching with a resistance ratio of high resistance state (HRS) to low resistance state (LRS) more than 3 × 10², accompanied with electroforming-free feature without any application of compliance current (ICC). The device can operate (read and switch) in small voltage and current ranges that makes it a low-power resistive switching device. The conduction mechanism in LRS was found to be Ohmic, whereas the HRS was governed by space charge-limited conduction mechanism. The current voltage and resistance temperature measurements indicate the presence of an interfacial AlO_x layer with oxygen-related defects near the top Al/NiFe₂O₄ interface. The device exhibits good program/erase endurance properties, acceptable memory window, and uniform resistive switching. In addition, different intermediate resistance states between HRS and LRS can be obtained in a controlled manner by choosing different stop voltages during the gradual RESET process, which makes the device a multilevel RS device and a potential candidate for future non-volatile resistive random access memory (RRAM).