Tetrahedral amorphous carbon resistive memories with graphene-based electrodes

Abstract Resistive-switching memories are alternative to Si-based ones, which face scaling and high power consumption issues. Tetrahedral amorphous carbon (ta-C) shows reversible, non-volatile resistive switching. Here we report polarity independent ta-C resistive memory devices with graphene-based electrodes. Our devices show ON/OFF resistance ratios ∼ , ten times higher than with metal electrodes, with no increase in switching power, and low power density ∼14 μ W μ m ⁻² . We attribute this to a suppressed tunneling current due to the low density of states of graphene near the Dirac point, consistent with the current–voltage characteristics derived from a quantum point contact model. Our devices also have multiple resistive states. This allows storing more than one bit per cell. This can be exploited in a range of signal processing/computing-type operations, such as implementing logic, providing synaptic and neuron-like mimics, and performing analogue signal processing in non-von-Neumann architectures.