National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

Funai Electric Company Ltd.

Yasuhisa Naitou

Tetsuo Shimizu

Hiroshi Suga

Yutaka Hayashi

Masatoshi Ono

Toshimi Fukuoka

Yuichiro Masuda

Tsuyoshi Takahashi

Shigeo Furuta

Touru Sumiya

Kumaragurubaran Somu

Masayo Horikawa

In a drive method for a memory element that includes an insulating substrate, a first electrode and a second electrode provided on the insulating substrate, and an inter-electrode gap portion provided between the first electrode and the second electrode and having a gap of the order of nanometers where a phenomenon of a change in resistance value between the first and second electrodes occurs, and that can perform a transition from a predetermined low-resistance state to a predetermined high-resistance state and a transition from the high-resistance state to the low-resistance state, a current pulse is applied to the memory element by a constant current circuit upon the transition from the high-resistance state to the low-resistance state.

Drive method for memory element and storage device using memory element

A memory element includes an insulating substrate; a first electrode and a second electrode on the insulating substrate; and an inter-electrode gap portion that causes a change in resistance value between the first and second electrodes. Applied to the memory element from a pulse generating source is a first voltage pulse for shifting from a predetermined low-resistance state to a predetermined high-resistance state, and a second voltage pulse for shifting from the high-resistance state to the low-resistance state through a series-connected resistor, by which current flowing to the memory element after the change to a low resistance value is reduced. When shifting from the high to the low-resistance state, a voltage pulse is applied such that an electrical resistance between the pulse generating source and the memory element becomes higher than the electrical resistance shifting from the low to the high-resistance state.

Drive method for memory element, and storage device using memory element

The present invention is contemplated for providing a resistance switching device having a very small device size of approximately 20 nm&#xd7;20 nm in its entirety, by taking advantage of a small diameter of a multilayered carbon nanotube or a multilayered carbon nanofiber per se, via a simpler manner that does not require any molecule inclusion step, with an excellent electric conductivity. Provided is a two-terminal resistance switching device, which has multilayered carbon nanofibers or multilayered carbon nanotubes disposed with a nano-scale gap width therebetween.

Two-terminal resistance switching device and semiconductor device

Growing community of inventors

Tsukuba, Japan

Yasuhisa Naitou