Bipolar resistive switching behavior in MoS2 nanosheets fabricated on ferromagnetic shape memory alloy

The present study explores the systematic investigation of resistive switching response of magnetron sputtered MoS2 thin films sandwiched between a Ni-Mn-In ferromagnetic shape memory alloy (bottom) and copper (top) electrodes. The Cu/MoS2/Ni-Mn-In device exhibits stable and reproducible bipolar resistive switching behavior. The current-voltage (I-V) analysis suggests that the device shows ohmic conduction behavior in the low resistance state (LRS) while space charge limited conduction is the dominating conduction mechanism in the high resistance state (HRS). The compliance current vs reset current measurements were also performed which reveals that the power consumption of the device can be suppressed by decreasing the compliance current. To explain the resistive switching behavior in the Cu/MoS2/Ni-Mn-In device, a conceptual model based on copper ion migration, is proposed and well explained. The resistive switching parameters such as the set voltage, LRS and HRS resistances, are also investigated in a temperature range overlapping with the martensite phase transformation temperatures of the bottom ferromagnetic shape memory alloy (Ni-Mn-In) electrode. It provides temperature as an extra degree of freedom to modulate the resistive switching characteristics of the fabricated device. The Cu/MoS2/Ni-Mn-In device shows a decent endurance of 500 and a long retention of 103. These results demonstrate the feasibility of the MoS2 based devices for futuristic tunable nonvolatile resistive random access memory applications.