Electrical properties of Pt interconnects for passive crossbar memory arrays

We report on the fabrication and the electrical characterization of platinum interconnects for novel non-volatile memory technologies. These nanowires present an important and essential contribution to the deep nanometer scaling of alternative architectures beyond CMOS, e.g. nanocrossbar arrays with resistance switching junctions. The nanowires, which have a thickness of 25 nm and a width ranging from 200 nm down to 40 nm, were patterned using electron beam direct writing. They were deposited by UHV electron beam evaporation in combination with a lift-off process.The electrical characteristic is increasingly affected by the contribution of surface effects like scattering at grain boundaries and scattering at the surfaces as the wire dimensions become smaller. With decreasing width of the platinum wire an increasing resistivity was observed, which is consistent with the theories of Fuchs-Sondheimer and Mayadas-Shatzkes. Our studies have shown that the investigated structures possess a high stability concerning the operational current densities up to 4 × 107 A/cm2, and an additional annealing step results in an improvement of the electrical wire properties, which is explained by a higher quality of the grain boundaries and side walls.