Investigating the Effects of Sulfur Treatment on Material Characteristics and Resistance Switching Device Applications with Supercritical Fluid Technique

A sulfur treatment based on the supercritical fluid (SCF) treatment is proposed and its effect on the silver (Ag)‐doped material and device is investigated. The sulfur treatment is achieved by mixing sulfur powder with carbon dioxide (CO2) in a reaction chamber under high pressure (3000 psi) at low reacting temperature (120 °C). Based on the experimental results, the SCF sulfur treatment can dramatically change the Ag‐doped SiO2 (Ag:SiO2) thin‐film characteristics, including surface morphology, crystallization, chemical bonding, and mole elements in accordance with the analyses of various materials. In addition, the SCF sulfur treatment is also applied to the Ag:SiO2‐based device to verify the resistance switching (RS) properties. Based on electrical measurement results, the device with the SCF sulfur treatment exhibits better performance. The graduate RS behaviors also exhibit multilevel switching in both set and reset processes, which proves its possible applications of the proposed SCF sulfur treatment. In addition, the current fitting method is used to verify the RS properties to illustrate the carrier transportation characteristics of the Ag:SiO2‐based device with the SCF sulfur treatment.