Memristive devices from porous silicon - ZnO/VO2 nanocomposites

As metal oxides act as an active media for oxygen vacancies transport after their infiltration/confinement in the submicron porous structure, we report the memristive device fabrication from nanostructured porous silicon - metal oxide (ZnO and VO2) composites. Scanning electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction were used for morphological and structural characterization, respectively. Predominant crystal phase of metal oxides was found to be wurtzite for ZnO and monoclinic for VO2. Electrical characterization reveals that both devices present symmetrical zero-crossing pinched hysteresis curves, typical of memristive systems. Although both the devices reveal significant endurance and stable switching ratio, ZnO-based device exhibits relatively better stability and 86% higher resistive switching ratio with respect to VO2-based device. The proposed memristive devices have potential applications as practical and economical structures that could be integrated in current silicon based microtechnology.