Evaluation of the colossal electroresistance (CER) effect and its application in the non-volatile Resistive Random Access Memory (RRAM)

Flash memory, the current leading technology for non-volatile memory (NVM), is projected by many to run obsolete in the face of future miniaturization trend in the semiconductor devices due to some of its technical limitations. Several different technologies have been developed in attempt for replacing Flash memory as the most dominant NVM technology; none of which seems to indicate significant success at the moment. Among these technologies is RRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory), a novel type of memory technology which has only recently emerged to join the race. The underlying principle of an RRAM device is based on the colossal electroresistance (CER) effect, i.e. the resistance switching behavior upon application of voltage of varying polarity and/or magnitude. This thesis aims to investigate the CER effect and how it can be designed to be a non-volatile memory as well as other novel application, e.g. memristor. The various technical aspects pertaining to this phenomenon, including the materials and the physical basis, are explored and analyzed. As a complementary to that, the market potential of the RRAM technology is also assessed. This includes the market study of memory industry, the current intellectual property (IP) landscape and some of the relevant business strategies. The production strategy (i.e. the production cost, initial investment, and pricing strategy) is then derived from the technical and market analysis evaluated earlier and with using some reasonable assumptions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2009

Author dc:creator

• Wicaksono, Aulia Tegar

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Caroline A. Ross.

• Materials Science and Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/54567

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/54567