High Density RRAM Arrays With Improved Thermal and Signal Integrity

This paper investigates new solutions for improving the performance of high density Resistive Random-Access Memories (RRAM), based on novel architecture and on the use of alternative materials. Starting from the conventional architecture, which integrates in a crossbar structure many elementary cells composed by one diode and one RRAM (1D1R), here an alternative reverse (1D1R-1R1D) architecture is proposed. This solution doubles the number of cells in a fixed volume and makes more efficient the bias management. An accurate electrothermal modeling is here carried out to check the obtained performance in terms of signal and thermal integrity. The use of the proposed architecture, along with a suitable choice of materials, including novel carbon nanomaterials, can solve or at least mitigate the electrical and thermal crosstalk problems, which are known to be critical for the RRAM crossbar configurations. A case-study is carried out, where a 3×3×4 crossbar structure is analyzed by means of a full 3D electrothermal model.