Resistive Switching at the Nanoscale in the Mott Insulator Compound GaTa4Se8

Vincent Dubost (1) , Tristan Cren (1) , Cristian Vaju (2) , Laurent Cario (2) , Benoît Corraze (2) , Etienne Janod (2) , François Debontridder (1) , Dimitri Roditchev (1)

1 INSP - Institut des Nanosciences de Paris
2 IMN - Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel

We study the Mott insulator compound GaTa4Se8 in which we previously discovered an electric-field-induced resistive transition. We show that the resistive switching is associated to the appearance of metallic and super-insulating nanodomains by means of scanning tunneling microscopy/spectroscopy (STM/STS). Moreover, we show that local electronic transitions can be controlled at the nanoscale at room temperature using the electric field of the STM tip. This opens the way for possible applications in resistive random access memories (RRAM) devices.

Mots clés: Resistive switches; Mott memories; electronic phase separation; STM

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Vincent Dubost, Tristan Cren, Cristian Vaju, Laurent Cario, Benoît Corraze, et al.. Resistive Switching at the Nanoscale in the Mott Insulator Compound GaTa4Se8. Nano Letters, 2013, 13 (8), pp.3648. ⟨10.1021/nl401510p⟩. ⟨hal-00980721⟩