Electrical Control over Volatile Mott Switching through Non-Volatile Memory Effects
Abstract
Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) and Vanadium Sesquioxide (V2O3) are Mott insulators that undergo an Insulator-to-Metal Transition (IMT) at ~340K and ~160K, respectively, manifested as an orders-of-magnitude reduction in their electrical resistance. These transitions provide the physical basis for their Volatile Resistive Switching (VRS) behavior, making them promising candidates for threshold-switching devices. Here, we show that the volatile switching in these materials can be strongly affected by non-volatile processes associated with the creation and annihilation of the conducting filament. These processes give rise to pronounced memory effects in which the initial switching voltage substantially exceeds that of subsequent cycles. We identify two distinct mechanisms underlying this behavior in different thermal regimes. In the phase-coexistence regime, a memory effect is observed in V2O3, arising from the spatial redistribution of metallic and insulating domains. Well below the hysteresis regime, an additional electroforming-like memory effect is observed in both VO2 and V2O3 which is attributed to the formation and/or migration of defects under the influence of a high electric field and a current surge associated with the IMT-driven switching. Using a protective internal resistor and a multi-step writing protocol, this normally destructive process can be harnessed to tune the switching voltage and power over a wide temperature range. These results demonstrate a route toward controlled programming of switching parameters in IMT-based resistive switching devices.
Related
- Energy-Efficient Non-Volatile Photonic Switching via Composition-Engineered Sn-Doped GST
- Frustration-Assisted Electrical Switching in CoxTaS2
- Non-Volatile Memory Devices for Neuromorphic Computing
- Orbital-coherence memory in electrical transport and its self-consistent Maxwell response
- Memory-induced optimal switching in a dynamic Ising-Kuramoto model
BibTeX
@misc{kronman2026electrical,
title = {{Electrical Control over Volatile Mott Switching through Non-Volatile Memory Effects}},
author = {Amihai Kronman and Gil Levi and Yoav Kalcheim},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2607.28787},
eprint = {2607.28787},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28787},
note = {CC BY-SA 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Electrical Control over Volatile Mott Switching through Non-Volatile Memory Effects
AU - Amihai Kronman
AU - Gil Levi
AU - Yoav Kalcheim
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/04
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2607.28787
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2607.28787
AB - Vanadium Dioxide (VO2) and Vanadium Sesquioxide (V2O3) are Mott insulators that undergo an Insulator-to-Metal Transition (IMT) at ~340K and ~160K, respectively, manifested as an orders-of-magnitude reduction in their electrical resistance. These transitions provide the physical basis for their Volatile Resistive Switching (VRS) behavior, making them promising candidates for threshold-switching devices. Here, we show that the volatile switching in these materials can be strongly affected by non-volatile processes associated with the creation and annihilation of the conducting filament. These processes give rise to pronounced memory effects in which the initial switching voltage substantially exceeds that of subsequent cycles. We identify two distinct mechanisms underlying this behavior in different thermal regimes. In the phase-coexistence regime, a memory effect is observed in V2O3, arising from the spatial redistribution of metallic and insulating domains. Well below the hysteresis regime, an additional electroforming-like memory effect is observed in both VO2 and V2O3 which is attributed to the formation and/or migration of defects under the influence of a high electric field and a current surge associated with the IMT-driven switching. Using a protective internal resistor and a multi-step writing protocol, this normally destructive process can be harnessed to tune the switching voltage and power over a wide temperature range. These results demonstrate a route toward controlled programming of switching parameters in IMT-based resistive switching devices.
ER -