Resistive switching behavior in diamond-like carbon films grown by pulsed laser deposition for resistance switching random access memory application

In this paper, nonvolatile bipolar resistive memory effects were observed in nitrogen doped diamond-like carbon (DLC) thin films prepared by a pulsed laser deposition technique. It is observed that the fabricated Pt/Ti/DLC/Pt structure exhibits good memory performances with an ON/OFF ratio >10, data retention time >10⁴ s, and low operation voltage (<1.5 V). The current mechanism is fitted by Ohmic and space charge limited conduction laws in low resistance state and high resistance state scenarios. The formation/rupture of metal filaments is due to the diffusion of the titanium ions.