Atsushi Himeno

Highly reliable TaOx ReRAM and direct evidence of redox reaction mechanism

Highly reliable TaOx ReRAM has been successfully demonstrated. The memory cell shows stable pulse switching with endurance over 109 cycles, sufficient retention exceeding 10 years at 85degC. TaOx exhibits stable high and low resistance states based on the redox reaction mechanism, confirmed by HX-PES directly for the first time. An 8 kbit 1T1R memory array with a good operating window has been fabricated using the standard 0.18 mum CMOS process.

An 8 Mb Multi-Layered Cross-Point ReRAM Macro With 443 MB/s Write Throughput

Nonvolatile memories with fast write operation at low voltage are required as storage devices to exceed flash memory performance. We develop an 8Mb multi-layered cross-point ReRAM macro with 443MB/S write throughput (64b parallel write per 17.2ns cycle), which is almost twice as fast as existing methods, using the fast-switching performance of TaOχ ReRAM and the following three techniques to reduce the sneak current in bipolar type cross-point cell array structure in an 0.18μm process. First, memory cell and array technologies reduce the sneak current with a newly developed bidirectional diode as a memory cell select element for the first time. Second, we use a hierarchical bitline (BL) structure for multi-layered cross-point memory with fast and stable current control. Third, we implement a multi-bit write architecture that realizes fast write operation and suppresses sneak current. This work is applicable to both high-density stand-alone and embedded memory with more stacked memory arrays and/or scaling memory cells.

Filament scaling forming technique and level-verify-write scheme with endurance over 107 cycles in ReRAM

Resistive RAM (ReRAM) has been recently developed for applications that require higher speed and lower voltage than Flash memory is able to provide. One of the applications is micro-controller units (MCUs) or SoCs with several megabits of embedded ReRAM. Another is solid-state drives (SSDs) where a combination of higher-density ReRAM and NAND flash memory would achieve high-performance and high-reliability storage [1], suitable for server applications for future cloud computing. ReRAM is attractive for several reasons. First, it operates at high speed and low voltage. Second, it enables high density due to the simple structure of the resistive element (RE) [2]. Third, it is immune to external environment such as magnetic fields or radiation, since the resistive switching is based on the redox reaction [3].