A novel method of identifying the carrier transport path in metal oxide resistive random access memory

Characterization of defect energy levels is of crucial importance to understand the carrier transport and conduction mechanism of a conducting filament. Currently, it is difficult to probe the defect energy level of a conducting filament in random access memory (RRAM) by experiment. Based on the activation energy of carrier transport from the first-principles calculations, we present a physical model correlating macroscopic I–V characteristics with material microstructure to analyze the defect energy level of a conducting filament in metal oxide RRAM. The carrier transport path in the conducting filament can be specially extracted using the defect energy level. (paper)