Highly Tunable Negative Differential Resistance Device Based on Insulator-to-Metal Phase Transition of Vanadium Dioxide

Abstract

Negative differential resistance (NDR) based on the band-to-bandtunneling (BTBT) mechanism has recently shown great potential in improvingthe performance of various electronic devices. However, the applicabilityof conventional BTBT-based NDR devices is restricted by their insufficientperformance due to the limitations of the NDR mechanism. In this study,we develop an insulator-to-metal phase transition (IMT)-based NDRdevice that exploits the abrupt resistive switching of vanadium dioxide(VO2) to achieve a high peak-to-valley current ratio (PVCR)and peak current density (J (peak)) as wellas controllable peak and valley voltages (V (peak/valley)). When a phase transition is induced in VO2, the effectivevoltage bias on the two-dimensional channel is decreased by the reductionin the VO2 resistance. Accordingly, the effective voltageadjustment induced by the IMT results in an abrupt NDR. This NDR mechanismbased on the abrupt IMT results in a maximum PVCR of 71.1 throughits gate voltage and VO2 threshold voltage tunability characteristics.Moreover, V (peak/valley) is easily modulatedby controlling the length of VO2. In addition, a maximum J (peak) of 1.6 x 10(6) A/m(2) is achieved through light-tunable characteristics. The proposedIMT-based NDR device is expected to contribute to the developmentof various NDR devices for next-generation electronics.