Integration of Lift-Off Based Lithography Process for Memristor Fabrication

This study introduces a lift-off based process integration scheme for memristor fabrication. Memristors are of promising electronic components for bio-mimicking computers, non-volatile memory devices, etc. The wide-spread use of memristors in electronic systems thoroughly depends on the quality and reproducibility of the fabrication procedure. The lift-off process conventionally combines lithography and sputtering techniques as well as wet processes. Each of these processes requires well-established recipes for a lean fabrication. The structure of our memristor design involves an active memristive layer sandwiched between the top and bottom electrodes. In this study, titanium oxide (TiOx) layer and the electrodes are formed via the lift-off process. Insulator and metal layers are deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering, and lithography is done using a mask aligner. Throughout the process flow, surface structures are characterized using a scanning electron microscope (SEM). Current and voltage measurements have been carried out to characterize memristive properties of the fabricated features. Accordingly, the existence of a successful resistive switching mechanism shows the memristive behavior of the fabricated device.