Voltage sweep modulated conductance quantization in oxide nanocomposites

Abstract

Bipolar resistive switching characteristics and conductance quantization behaviour as a function of voltage sweep have been demonstrated in a nanocomposite based device comprising of SnO₂ nanoparticles residing over CeO₂ nanorod arrays. The voltage sweep rate has been found to greatly influence the device performance. The stepwise conductance behaviour in the nanocomposite device emerged at a low voltage sweep rate and this behaviour can be attributed to the formation and disruption of atomic scale conducting filaments. In AC pulse mode, the quantized conductance states with integer or half integer multiples of G_o were also observed. Furthermore, the impact of varying the SnO₂ concentration on the resistive switching performance of the nanocomposite based device was also studied. The present study reveals that the conductance quantization behaviors can be well modulated by controlling the voltage sweep rate and in turn could offer the prospective of multi-level data storage capability.