Electrical 1D tomography of nanofilaments using in-operando electrical characterization of Pt/NiO/Pt resistive memory cells during FIB milling

•In-operando electrical tomography is obtained using electrical measurements during FIB milling.•In Pt/NiO/Pt resistive memory cells, the conducting nanofilament has a “tree-like” structure.•This electrical shape is consistent with the crystalline defect map obtained from HRTEM.•A subnanometric spatial resolution is achieved.•An atomistic model involving oxygen vacancies is proposed.

Electrical characterization during focused ion beam (FIB) milling of an elementary Pt/NiO/Pt resistive memory cell is used to localize the conducting channels and to estimate the size and shape of the conducting nanofilament. A good agreement is found with cross sectional high resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) images. This methodology is a potential tool to obtain in-operando electrical tomography of conducting paths with subnanometric spatial resolution.

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