Ultra-efficient resistance switching between charge ordered phases in 1T-TaS2 with a single picosecond electrical pulse

Rok Venturini,1,2 Anže Mraz,1,3 Igor Vaskivskyi,1 Yevhenii Vaskivskyi,1,2 Damjan Svetin,1,4 Tomaž Mertelj,1 Jing Cheng,5 Genyu Chen,5 Priyanthi Amarasinghe,6 Syed B. Qadri,7 Sudhir B. Trivedi,6 Roman Sobolewski,5,8 and Dragan Mihailovic1,4

1Jožef Stefan Institute, Jamova 39, Ljubljana, SI-1000, Slovenia,

2Department of Physics, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, University of Ljubljana, Jadranska 19, Ljubljana, SI-1000, Slovenia

3Faculty for Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Tržaška 25, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia

4CENN Nanocenter, Jamova 39, SI-1000 Ljubljana, SI-1000, Slovenia

5Materials Science Program and Laboratory for Laser Energetics, University of Rochester, New York 14627, USA

6Brimrose Technology Corporation, Sparks, MD 21152, USA

7U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, Washington D.C., USA

8Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester, New York 14627, USA

Resistance switching between charge ordered phases of the 1T-TaS₂ has shown to be potentially useful for the development of high-speed, energy efficient non-volatile memory devices1,2. While ultrafast switching was previously reported with optical pulses3, determination of the intrinsic speed limits of actual devices that are triggered by electrical pulses is technically challenging and hitherto still largely unexplored.

Using an optoelectronic “laboratory-on-a-chip” especially designed for measurements of ultrafast memory switching, we are able to accurately measure the electrical switching parameters with sub-100 fs temporal resolution. A photo-switch is used for ultrashort electrical pulse generation, while its propagation along a coplanar transmission line, and across the memory device, is detected using electro-optical sampling using a purpose-grown highly-resistive electro-optic (Cd,Mn)Te crystal substrate.

We observe non-volatile resistance switching with single 1.9 ps electrical pulses, with a switching energy of 0.47 atto-Joules. This represents a significant advance over existing non-volatile memory device concepts in terms of both parameters. The ground-breaking result suggest that electrical charge manipulation in 1T-TaS2 could become a new technological platform for cryogenic, ultrahigh-speed, energy efficient memory devices.

1. Vaskivskyi, I. et al. Nat. Commun. 7, 11442 (2016).
2. Mraz, A. et al. arXiv 2103.04622, (2021).
3. Ravnik, J., Vaskivskyi, I., Mertelj, T. & Mihailovic, D. Phys. Rev. B 97, 075304 (2018).

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