Nanoporous silicon oxide memory

Oxide-based two-terminal resistive random access memory (RRAM) is considered one of the most promising candidates for next-generation nonvolatile memory. We introduce here a new RRAM memory structure employing a nanoporous (NP) silicon oxide (SiO_x) material which enables unipolar switching through its internal vertical nanogap. Through the control of the stochastic filament formation at low voltage, the NP SiO_x memory exhibited an extremely low electroforming voltage (∼1.6 V) and outstanding performance metrics. These include multibit storage ability (up to 9-bits), a high ON-OFF ratio (up to 10⁷ A), a long high-temperature lifetime (≥10 ⁴ s at 100 °C), excellent cycling endurance (≥10⁵), sub-50 ns switching speeds, and low power consumption (∼6 × 10 ^-5 W/bit). Also provided is the room temperature processability for versatile fabrication without any compliance current being needed during electroforming or switching operations. Taken together, these metrics in NP SiO_x RRAM provide a route toward easily accessed nonvolatile memory applications.