A new mechanism for memristive switching in 2D materials is through electric-field controllable electronic/structural phase transitions, but these devices have not outperformed status quo 2D memristors. Here, we report a high-performance bipolar phase change memristor from strain engineered multilayer 1T'-MoTe2 that now surpasses the performance metrics (on/off ratio, switching voltage, switching speed) of all 2D memristive devices, achieved without forming steps. Using process-induced strain engineering, we directly pattern stressed metallic contacts to induce a semimetallic to semiconducting phase transition in MoTe2 forming a self-aligned vertical transport memristor with semiconducting MoTe2 as the active region. These devices utilize strain to bring them closer to the phase transition boundary and achieve ultra-low ~90 mV switching voltage, ultra-high ~108 on/off ratio, 5 ns switching, and retention of over 105 s. Engineered tunability of the device switching voltage and on/off ratio is also achieved by varying the single process parameter of contact metal film force (film stress × film thickness).
@article{arxiv.2308.13637,
title = {Strain Engineering for High-Performance Phase Change Memristors},
author = {Wenhui Hou and Ahmad Azizimanesh and Aditya Dey and Yufeng Yang and Wuxiucheng Wang and Chen Shao and Hui Wu and Hesam Askari and Sobhit Singh and Stephen M. Wu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2308.13637},
year = {2023}
}