Electric field induced phase transition in vertical MoTe2 and Mo1-xWxTe2 based RRAM devices

Published

December 10, 2018

Author(s)

Feng Zhang, Sergiy Krylyuk, Huairuo Zhang, Cory A. Milligan, Dmitry Y. Zemlyanov, Leonid A. Bendersky, Albert Davydov, Joerg Appenzeller, Benjamin P. Burton, Yugi Zhu

Abstract

Transition metal dichalcogenides have attracted attention as potential building blocks for various electronic applications due to their atomically thin nature and polymorphism. Here, we report an electric-field-induced structural transition from a 2H semiconducting to a distorted transient structure (2Hd) and orthorhombic Td conducting phase in vertical 2H-MoTe2- and Mo1−xWxTe2-based resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices. RRAM programming voltages are tunable by the transition metal dichalcogenide thickness and show a distinctive trend of requiring lower electric fields for Mo1−xWxTe2 alloys versus MoTe2 compounds. Devices showed reproducible resistive switching within 10 ns between a high resistive state and a low resistive state. Moreover, using an Al2O3/MoTe2 stack, On/off current ratios of 106 with programming currents lower than 1 μA were achieved in a selectorless RRAM architecture. The sum of these findings demonstrates that controlled electrical state switching in two-dimensional materials is achievable and highlights the potential of transition metal dichalcogenides for memory applications.

Citation

Nature Materials

Volume

18

Pub Type

Journals

Citation

Zhang, F. , Krylyuk, S. , Zhang, H. , Milligan, C. , Zemlyanov, D. , Bendersky, L. , Davydov, A. , Appenzeller, J. , Burton, B. and Zhu, Y. (2018), Electric field induced phase transition in vertical MoTe2 and Mo1-xWxTe2 based RRAM devices, Nature Materials (Accessed October 17, 2025)