High-resolution X-ray imaging of conductive filaments in VO<sub>2</sub> nano-gaps

ORAL

Abstract

Electrically driven metal-insulator transition in vanadium dioxide (VO2) is of interest in novel memory devices, neural computation, and high-speed electronics. Resistive switching behavior of such devices is driven by the formation of Joule heating conductive nano-filaments between the contacts in the switched state and highly depends on the confinement and morphology of the nano-gap. We applied X-ray nano-diffraction to image the structure of 800x300 nm gap made of 100 nm VO2 film in operando conditions. High-resolution images of the several identical gaps in the switched state show tiny filaments of the metallic phase connecting the corners of the terminals. Interestingly, these filaments always appear at the same location which evidences a direct connection with the film morphology.

*The work at UCSD was supported by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences. The X-ray nano-diffraction experiment used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by

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Presenters

  • Anatoly Shabalin

    • Department of Physics, Univ of California - San Diego
    • University of California San Diego

Authors

  • Anatoly Shabalin

    • Department of Physics, Univ of California - San Diego
    • University of California San Diego

  • Javier Del Valle Granda

    • Department of Physics, Univ of California - San Diego
    • Department of Physics and Center for Advanced Nanoscience, Univ of California - San Diego
    • Department of Physics and Center for Advance Nanoscience, University of California San Diego
    • Physics Department and Center for Advanced Nanoscience, University of California San Diego

  • Martin Holt

    • Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory

  • Ivan Schuller

    • Department of Physics, Univ of California - San Diego
    • University of California, San Diego
    • Department of Physics and Center for Advanced Nanoscience, Univ of California - San Diego
    • UC San Diego
    • Department of Physics and Center for Advance Nanoscience, University of California San Diego
    • Physics Department and Center for Advanced Nanoscience, University of California San Diego
    • Univ of California - San Diego
    • Physics, University of California, San Diego

  • Oleg Shpyrko

    • Department of Physics, Univ of California - San Diego
    • University of California, San Diego
    • University of California San Diego