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Switching the electrical resistance of individual dislocations in single-crystalline SrTiO3

Nature Materials volume 5, pages 312–320 (2006)Cite this article

Abstract

The great variability in the electrical properties of multinary oxide materials, ranging from insulating, through semiconducting to metallic behaviour, has given rise to the idea of modulating the electronic properties on a nanometre scale for high-density electronic memory devices. A particularly promising aspect seems to be the ability of perovskites to provide bistable switching of the conductance between non-metallic and metallic behaviour by the application of an appropriate electric field. Here we demonstrate that the switching behaviour is an intrinsic feature of naturally occurring dislocations in single crystals of a prototypical ternary oxide, SrTiO3. The phenomenon is shown to originate from local modulations of the oxygen content and to be related to the self-doping capability of the early transition metal oxides. Our results show that extended defects, such as dislocations, can act as bistable nanowires and hold technological promise for terabit memory devices.

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Figure 1: Insulator-to-metal transition and resistance switching in undoped SrTiO3 single crystals.
Figure 2: Filamentary structure induced by electroformation.
Figure 3: Electroformation and metallic conductance of individual dislocations.
Figure 4: Resistance switching of a single dislocation.
Figure 5: Extended OSrO defect in SrTiO3 calculated in a 5×4 supercell.
Figure 6: A schematic illustration and simulation of resistance switching in single-crystalline material.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank R. Dittmann for providing the epitaxial thin films. We would like to thank R. Dittmann for providing the epitaxial thin films. We appreciate the valuable discussions with J. G. Bednorz and the stimulus received from S. Blügel. We also acknowledge the inspiring comments by E. K. H. Salje and the critical reading of the manuscript by A. Rüdiger.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institut für Festkörperforschung, Forschungszentrum Jülich, 52425, Jülich, Germany

    Krzysztof Szot, Wolfgang Speier, Gustav Bihlmayer & Rainer Waser

  2. Institute of Physics, University of Silesia, 40-007, Katowice, Poland

    Krzysztof Szot

  3. Institut für Werkstoffe der Elektrotechnik, RWTH Aachen, 52056, Aachen, Germany

    Rainer Waser

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Correspondence to Krzysztof Szot or Rainer Waser.

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Szot, K., Speier, W., Bihlmayer, G. et al. Switching the electrical resistance of individual dislocations in single-crystalline SrTiO3. Nature Mater 5, 312–320 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1614

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