Memristively Programmable Transistors

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The core-element of today’s dominating Flash-memory technology are floating-gate transistors. When designing the gate-dielectric of floating-gate transistors, a tradeoff between fast write-access and long state retention has to be made. We recently reported on a novel prototype of a memristively programmable transistor (memTR). The advantage of memTRs is that the logic state is encoded by nanoionic processes instead of classical charge storage as in case of floating-gate transistors. This offers the potential of fast write-access, long state retention and high programming endurance. A memTR is essentially an innovative combination of a transistor and a resistive switch (also known as memristive switch or memristor) integrated on the transistor’s gate contact. Resistive switches are low-power devices with short programming and write access times. Due to their analogue and non-linear behavior memristive devices are also used in neuromorphic applications. Based on our preliminary proof-of-concept results memTRs will be fabricated, characterized and optimized. We will make use of BEOL-compatible fabrication processes. We will characterize in detail the devices and the operation principle using advanced electrical, spectroscopic and microscopic techniques. These findings will be used for a fundamental understanding of the operation principle of memTRs and for further device optimization. Based on these results we will also experimentally analyze the application potential of memTRs for neuromorphics.