Effects of high energy heavy ion irradiation on resistive switches

Resistive switches have great potential in aerospace application due to their excellent radiation resistibility. It is important to study the effect of radiation on resistive switches. In this work, we use Ta5+ with an energy of 125 MeV to irradiate the Cu/Ta2O5 /Pt devices. Here, fresh devices are irradiated by 10(8) and 10(9) ions/cm(2) Ta5+, respectively. The devices exhibit high radiation resistibility under an irradiation dosage of 10(8) ions/cm(2). However, the operating voltage was changed from 5 similar to- 2 V to 2 similar to -1.5 V under a dosage of 10(9) ions/cm(2). High energy heavy ion irradiation can controllably modify the density of defects or pores in resistive layer, reduce the barrier height of the redox reaction and achieve rapid migration of large amounts of ions. Moreover, the defects or pores generated by irradiation will provide growth paths for preventing conducive filaments from random growth and adjust the size of conducive filaments, making them more likely be in a stable state with the lowest energy and increasing the retention to be more than 8 x 10(4) s under a current compliance of 100 mu A.