Abstract
Recently, a kaleidoscope range of high-technology electronic products-including smart phone, tablet, and laptop- have long time hungered for an alternative for mass data storage application. The mainstream NVM that dominate the market nowadays, Flash, have suffered from a spectrum of challenges--current leakage, ultra-high apply voltage, and, most important, scale possibility. These barrier, paradoxically, serve as catalyst for full-bloom investigation on new memory technology, especially resistive random access memory, RRAM. In this dissertation, we propose a novel embedded RRAM structure that is fabricated by advanced 28nm high-k metal gate (HKMG ) CMOS logic process.This memory cell is fully compatible with CMOS logic process without any extra process flow or mask. This RRAM owns small resistive switching area and unipolar characteristics, which ensure promising candidate of high density application like cross-point array. The DC analyses demonstrate the low voltage operation and high program speed, optimizing the set/reset supply voltage as well. The set/resetdisturb test, continuous read test and 150oC and 85oCbaking for 500 hours retention test, ultimately, prove highly endurance and no reliability concern which guarantee this memory cell as the candidate for next generation. We, moreover, discuss the cell characteristics and structure along withthe characteristics of DC and AC analyses, reliability results and CMOS compatibility issue to fully understand the HKMG RRAM and to optimize the RRAM performance.