Coexistence of unipolar and bipolar modes in Ag/ZnO/Pt resistive switching memory with oxygen-vacancy and metal-Ag filaments

In this study, the unipolar resistive switching (URS) and bipolar resistive switching (BRS) are demonstrated to be coexistent in the Ag/ZnO/Pt memory device, and both modes are observed to strongly depend on the polarity of forming voltage. The mechanisms of the URS and BRS behaviors could be attributed to the electric-field-induced migration of oxygen vacancies (V-O) and metal-Ag conducting filaments (CFs) respectively, which are confirmed by investigating the temperature dependences of low resistance states in both modes. Furthermore, we compare the resistive switching (RS) characteristics (e.g., forming and switching voltages, reset current and resistance states) between these two modes based on V-O-and Ag-CFs. The BRS mode shows better switching uniformity and lower power than the URS mode. Both of these modes exhibit good RS performances, including good retention, reliable cycling and high-speed switching. The result indicates that the coexistence of URS and BRS behaviors in a single device has great potential applications in future nonvolatile multi-level memory.