A facile hydrothermal synthesis and memristive switching performance of rutile TiO2 nanowire arrays

A facile one-step hydrothermal method has been reported to prepare the single crystalline rutile TiO2 nanowire arrays with (101) preferred orientation on the FTO substrate at a low temperature of 120 °C for 4 h. The as-prepared Au/TiO2 NWAs/FTO based device indicates a nonvolatile bipolar memristive switching behavior. The current ratio between low-resistance state and high-resistance state exceeds two orders of magnitude at −0.5 V. The memristive switching behaviors of the device have been elucidated by the Ohmic conduction mechanism and the trap-controlled space charge limited current conduction mechanism. Furthermore, the Schottky barriers modulated by the oxygen vacancies at the Au/TiO2 interface have been suggested to dominate the bias voltages-controlled bipolar memristive switching behaviors of the device. This work indicates that the Au/TiO2 NWAs/FTO based device may be a promising candidate for the memristor applications.