Total ionizing dose tolerance of Ag - Ge₄₀S₆₀ based programmable metallization cells

Programmable Metallization Cells (PMC) are two- terminal elements that exhibit resistance switching based on the combination of bias dependent ion conduction through a solid-state electrolyte and reduction/oxidation (redox) reactions occurring at the electrode terminals. PMC based resistive random access memory (ReRAM) is currently used in emerging nonvolatile memory technologies and has the potential to be the successor of current flash memory. In this study we demonstrate the radiation tolerance of Ag-doped Ge ₄₀S₆₀ based PMC elements that were irradiated up to a total ionizing dose (TID) of 10 Mrad(Ge₄₀S₆₀ ) using ⁶⁰Co gamma rays. The irradiation tests on the PMC devices, with two different Ag anode thicknesses (35 nm and 100 nm), show no significant degradation in the resistance switching characteristics.