Silicon dioxide is not only a widely applied material in semiconductor industry, but recently its resistive switching properties were also demonstrated [1]. It was shown, that metal-SiO2-metal nanostructures exhibit unipolar, phase-change type resistive switching, but thanks to the so-called dead time rule both the OFF and ON state resistances are achievable at zero bias [2]. Despite its well-known switching properties, the physical mechanism behind the switching is still not fully clarified. The applicant will investigate the nonlinear conduction properties and the noise characteristics of SiO2 based resistive switches with the goal of gaining better insight to the details of the switching mechanism.

[1] J. Yao et al., Resistive Switches and Memories from Silicon Oxide, NANO LETTERS 10, 4105 (2010)

[2] L. Pósa et al., Multiple Physical Time Scales and Dead Time Rule in Few-Nanometers Sized Graphene–SiOx-Graphene Memristors, NANO LETTERS 17 6783 (2017)