Electrochemical Oxidation Induced Multi-Level Memory in Carbon-Based Resistive Switching Devices

In this work, we report for the first time the electrochemical oxidation as a technique to improve the electrical performances of carbon-based resistive switching devices. The devices obtained through the anodic oxidation of carbon-structures possess superior electrical performances i.e. a 3-level memory behavior and an ON/OFF ratio two order of magnitude higher than the non-oxidized carbon-based devices. It is demonstrated that the chemical composition of the carbon structures (i.e. percentage of oxygen groups, sp(2) and sp(3) carbon atoms) plays a key role in the improvement of the carbon-based devices. The electrochemical oxidation allows the possibility to control the oxidation degree, and therefore, to tailor the devices electrical performances. We demonstrated that the resistive switching behavior in the electrochemically oxidized devices is originated from the formation of conductive filament paths, which are built from the oxygen vacancies and structural defects of the anodic oxidized carbon materials. The novelty of this work relies on the anodic oxidation as a time- and cost-effective technique that can be employed for the engineering and improvement of the electrical performances of next generation carbon-based resistive switching devices.