High resistive state retention in room temperature solution processed biocompatible memory devices for health monitoring applications

Wearable and bio-implantable health monitoring applications require flexible memory devices that can be used to locally store body vitals prior to transmission or to support local data processing in distributed smart systems. In recent years, non-volatile resistive random access memories composed of oxide-based insulators such as hafnium oxide and niobium pentoxide have attracted a great deal of interest. Unfortunately, hafnium and niobium are not low-cost materials and may also present health challenges. In this work, we have explored the alternative of using titanium dioxide as the insulating oxide using a low-cost solution-phase deposition process. Aqueous sol deposited thin films were deposited on standard RCA-cleaned commercial thermal silicon dioxide (500 nm) wafer (500 µm). Patterned bottom contacts Cr/Au (∼200/300 Å) using shadow masks were deposited on the substrate using successive DC sputtering, and thermal evaporation, respectively at 5 X 10-6 Torr. A sol was prepared using titanium (IV) butoxide as precursor hydrolysed under water and ethanol to form a colloidal solution (sol) at 50°C under constant stirring. Powder X-Ray Diffraction (PXRD) scans of calcined (from sol at 750°C) nanoparticles show a mixture of anatase and rutile phases, confirming the composition of the material. The sol was slowly cooled to room temperature before being spin coated at low rotational speeds on to the substrate in multiple steps involving several spin coating and drying steps to form a uniform film. Top contacts (Ag) of thickness (∼500 Å) were deposited on the sol-deposited thin films using thermal evaporation. The resulting devices were coated with a thick layer of polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) using a 10:1 ratio of base elastomer and curing agent respectively. After drying the PDMS, resistance measurements were carried out. A high resistance state was detected prior to electroforming in the air at ∼5 MΩ which remains nearly unchanged (∼4.3 MΩ) when dipped in a ∼7.4 pH phosphate buffer solution (equivalent to human blood’s pH (reference average value ∼7.4 pH)). Unencapsulated devices (UM1) were further characterized in air using a Keithley 4200-SCS semiconductor parameter analyzer in dual sweep mode to observe repeatable hysteresis behavior with a large difference between trace and retrace R-V characteristics (∼50±3% over a pristine device), which compares favorably with recent data in the literature on high-performance sputtered TiO2 memristors. Unchanged retention ratio using biocompatible device materials and encapsulation suggests that these devices can be used for biomedical implantable sensor electronics.