Simulation of cycle-to-cycle instabilities in SiO<inf>x</inf>-Based ReRAM devices using a self-correlated process with long-term variation

© 1980-2012 IEEE. Cycle-to-cycle (C2C) current variability occurring in ReRAM devices is not only a stochastic feature inherent to electron transport in low-dimensional conducting structures but also a consequence of the measurement protocol used to characterize the device evolution during resistance switching. In such latest case, C2C changes depend on the particular arrangement of the ions or vacancies that form the conducting filament spanning the dielectric film. In this letter, a discrete first-order autoregressive model AR(1) with long-term variation is used to represent both the random and the 'deterministic' behaviors of the high resistance state current. Simulation of C2C instabilities in SiOx is carried out through the quantum point-contact model for filamentary electron transport in dielectrics with fluctuating confinement potential barrier height. Simplicity is of utmost importance, since the proposed approach is aimed for circuit simulation environments in which complex and time-consuming computations need to be avoided.