Abhishek Sundararajan

Memristive switching of single-component metallic nanowires

Memristors have recently generated significant interest due to their potential use in nanoscale logic and memory devices. Of the four passive circuit elements, the memristor (a two-terminal hysteretic switch) has so far proved hard to fabricate out of a single material. Here we employ electromigration to create a reversible passive electrical switch, a memristive device, from a single-component metallic nanowire. To achieve resistive switching in a single-component structure we introduce a new class of memristors, devices in which the state variable of resistance is the systems physical geometry. By exploiting electromigration to reversibly alter the geometry, we repeatedly switch the resistance of single-component metallic nanowires between low and high states over many cycles. The reversible electromigration causes the nanowire to be cyclically narrowed to approximately 10 nm in width, resulting in a change in resistance by a factor of two. As a result, this work represents a potential route to the creation of nanoscale circuits from a single metallic element.

High-Throughput Nanogap Formation Using Single Ramp Feedback Control

We demonstrate a technique for simultaneously fabricating arrays of electromigrated nanogaps using a single-ramp feedback-controlled voltage clamp. The parallel formation is achieved by controlling the applied bias with a voltage clamp directly adjacent to a nanogap array containing low-impedance shunts. Self-balancing of the electromigration permits the two voltage leads to fix the applied voltage across all the forming nanogaps simultaneously. This single-ramp feedback-controlled voltage clamp method is at least a 100 times faster than previous work utilizing computer feedback control of parallel nanojunctions and also circumvents the deleterious thermal runaway that occurs in the conventional single-ramp technique.

Analytical model for self-heating in nanowire geometries

An analytical closed form diffusive model is developed of Joule heating in a device consisting of a nanowire connected to two contacts on a substrate. This analytical model is compared to finite-element simulations and demonstrates excellent agreement over a wider range of system parameters in comparison to other recent models, with particularly large improvements in cases when the width of the nanowire is less than the thermal healing length of the contacts and when the thermal resistance of the contact is appreciable relative to the thermal resistance of the nanowire. The success of this model is due to more accurately accounting for the heat spreading within the contact region of a device and below the nanowire into a substrate. The heat spreading is achieved by matching the linear heat flow near the nanowire interfaces with a radially symmetric spreading solution through an interpolation function. Additional features of this model are the ability to incorporate contact resistances that may be present ...

Direct observation of Li diffusion in Li-doped ZnO nanowires

The direct observation of Li diffusion in Li-doped zinc oxide nanowires (NWs) was realized by using in situ heating in the scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM). A continuous increase of low atomic mass regions within a single NW was observed between 200 °C and 600 °C when heated in vacuum, which was explained by the conversion of interstitial to substitutional Li in the ZnO NW host lattice. A kick-out mechanism is introduced to explain the migration and conversion of the interstitial Li (Lii) to Zn-site substitutional Li (LiZn), and this mechanism is verified with low-temperature (11 K) photoluminescence measurements on as-grown and annealed Li-doped zinc oxide NWs, as well as the observation of an increase of NW surface roughing with applied bias.

Electrostatic force microscopy and electrical isolation of etched few-layer graphene nano-domains

Nanostructured bi-layer graphene samples formed through catalytic etching are investigated with electrostatic force microscopy. The measurements and supporting computations show a variation in the microscopy signal for different nano-domains that are indicative of changes in capacitive coupling related to their small sizes. Abrupt capacitance variations detected across etch tracks indicates that the nano-domains have strong electrical isolation between them. Comparison of the measurements to a resistor-capacitor model indicates that the resistance between two bi-layer graphene regions separated by an approximately 10 nm wide etch track is greater than about 1×1012 Ω with a corresponding gap resistivity greater than about 3×1014 Ω⋅nm. This extremely large gap resistivity suggests that catalytic etch tracks within few-layer graphene samples are sufficient for providing electrical isolation between separate nano-domains that could permit their use in constructing atomically thin nanogap electrodes, interconn...

Doping and hysteretic switching of polymer-encapsulated graphene field effect devices

The effects of encapsulating graphene with poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer are determined through in situ electrical transport measurements. After regenerating graphene devices in dry-nitrogen environments, PMMA is applied to their surfaces. Low-temperature annealing decreases the overall doping level, suggesting that residual solvent plays an important role in the doping. For few-layer graphene devices, we even observe stable n-doping through annealing. Application of solvent onto encapsulated devices demonstrates enhanced hysteric switching between p and n-doped states. The stability and ubiquitous use of PMMA in nanolithography make this polymer a potentially useful localized doping agent for graphene and other two-dimensional materials.

Nonlinear Ballistic Transport in an Atomically Thin Material.

Ultrashort devices that incorporate atomically thin components have the potential to be the smallest electronics. Such extremely scaled atomically thin devices are expected to show ballistic nonlinear behavior that could make them tremendously useful for ultrafast applications. While nonlinear diffusive electron transport has been widely reported, clear evidence for intrinsic nonlinear ballistic transport in the growing array of atomically thin conductors has so far been elusive. Here we report nonlinear electron transport of an ultrashort single-layer graphene channel that shows quantitative agreement with intrinsic ballistic transport. This behavior is shown to be distinctly different than that observed in similarly prepared ultrashort devices consisting, instead, of bilayer graphene channels. These results suggest that the addition of only one extra layer of an atomically thin material can make a significant impact on the nonlinear ballistic behavior of ultrashort devices, which is possibly due to the very different chiral tunneling of their charge carriers. The fact that we observe the nonlinear ballistic response at room temperature, with zero applied magnetic field, in non-ultrahigh vacuum conditions and directly on a readily accessible oxide substrate makes the nanogap technology we utilize of great potential for achieving extremely scaled high-speed atomically thin devices.