December 4, 2012 Noon – 1  pm
Texas Instruments (TI) Auditorium E-1
2900 Semiconductor Drive
Santa Clara, CA

TITLE: Atomistic aspects of the resistive switching characteristics in RRAM devices

SPEAKER: Blanka Magyari-Köpe, Senior Research Engineer, EE Department, Stanford

ABSTRACT:
Recently, numerous experimental and theoretical investigations are undertaken in academia as well as various product-oriented efforts are going on in industry for resistives witching memory. The rapid rise in publications for RRAM have mostly dealt with resistive switching mechanism, electronic conduction mechanisms for both “ON” and “OFF” state, formation and annihilation of conductive paths, and addressing scalability, retention and endurance issues. Perhaps still the major “unknown” is how we can reach clearer understanding of resistive switching mechanism by a rigorous physics based modeling which can serve for materials and structural optimization of RRAM cell, followed by selection devices and memory array configurations. This talk will discuss (1) progress made for switching mechanisms for resistive switching in terms of “ON” and “OFF” state formation energies, which has implications to switching power scaling coupled with retention characteristics, (2) physical mechanism of the “ON” conduction by using ab-initio simulation techniques which delineate the role of oxygen vacancies in forming a conductive filament in transition metal oxides, (3) investigation of various metal electrodes and dopants effects, to assess the scalability and endurance in terms of programming power reduction as well as variability improvement and retention characteristics.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY:
Blanka Magyari-Köpe received her Ph.D. degree in physics from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 2003. Since 2006, she has been an engineering Research Associate and from 2011 a Senior Research Engineer in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to this position she was a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles.
Her research interests include adapting and applying high-precision, accurate and efficient quantum mechanical modeling to real applications. She had been working on the analysis and fundamental understanding of electronic properties of novel and technologically relevant materials, i.e., perovskites, metal alloys, hydrogen storage materials, metal gate/high-k MOS structures and RRAM device materials. Currently, she is involved in projects that involve understanding the RRAM switching mechanism and the role and control of nanointerfaces between metallic, insulating, and semiconducting materials, seeking solutions for how to design and manipulate them at the atomic level to achieve increased performance in electronic devices.. She has given over 24 invited talks and has published more than 40 scientific papers.

AGENDA:

• 11:30 am – Registration & light lunch (pizza & drinks)
• Noon – Presentation & Questions/Answers
• 1:00 pm – Adjourn