LAUSR

Currently the most promising lines of research are the development of nanosized bit-cell memory and designing microelectronic devices a few nanometers in the size. The resistive switches relying on thin-film elements have been recently reported [1]; it should be noted that a positive voltage bias on the specimen gives rise to a low-resistance state (on), while a negative voltage bias – to high-resistance state (off). In particular, this character of the current-voltage characteristics was observed in the LiF films with copper nanoclusters (Cu NCs) [2]. The memristor operation parameter, determined from the ratio of the currents in the onand off states, was found to be equal to 510 at the voltage 0.6 V. During the half-a-year storage of the films, this parameter decreased to 410. The purpose of this study is to identify the aging mechanism. We investigated the current-voltage characteristics (CVCs) of cross conduction and the optical absorption spectra of LiF films with Cu NCs, which were deposited by magnetron sputtering on the substrates from current-conducting glass by the process described elsewhere [3]. The CVCs were measured using a standard procedure according to a classical scheme, where a U5-11 electrometer was used to measure the voltage drop on a reference resistance switched in series with the specimen. For this purpose the point electrodes with the contact area 110 mm were used. The voltage drop on the specimen was measured within 0–10 V and the concentration of Cu NCs was monitored from the absorption spectrum in the band of a volumetric plasmon resonance of Cu NCs in the region ~500 nm [4]. In order to find the energy distribution of the electron traps, the experimental CVCs were constructed in the log-log coordinates (Fig. 1). As it is evident from Fig. 1, we obtained straight lines. This implies that the current flowing through the conductor is limited by the bulk space charge (BSC) [5]. In this case the current has a power-law dependence on the voltage (U) and the dielectric thickness (L)