In recent years, huge efforts have been made in the research community to overcome the limitations in Flash and RAM memories, and consequently, new emerging technologies are competing in the race towards a new paradigm in information storage. In particular, nonvolatile memories based on the Resistive Switching (RS) effect, where two (or more) reversible resistance states can be induced upon application of an electric field, has emerged with excellent performance. This phenomenon has been observed in many oxide systems, in particular in perovskite oxides, which are materials showing outstanding properties giving rise to exotic physical phenomena due to the strong electronic correlation, such as metal-insulator transitions (MIT). This is the case of the metallic perovskite La_1-xSr_xMnO₃ (LSMO), RENiO₃ (RE=rare earth) and YBa₂Cu₃O₇(YBCO) family compounds, which are able to display Volume RS effects induced by the MIT and therefore, small changes in carrier concentration can induce huge resistance changes. The mechanism underlying this phenomenon is still unclear although oxygen vacancies mobility plays an important role in the mechanism underneath this phenomenon.

In this presentation we will discuss our studies on bipolar resistive switching of the mentioned perovskite oxides. Switching characteristics have been evaluated by C-SPM and I(V) curves with metal electrodes. Scanning tunneling microscopy and spectroscopy (STM/S), transport and resistive measurements were performed to gain insight into the local density of states of the material for different resistance states. Large resistance rations (10²-10⁴), over 100 cycles experiments, multilevel switching and switching dynamics have been evaluated. In addition, we have confirmed the strong influence of different atmospheres on the resistive switching properties of bare LSMO thin films. Remarkably, this influence disappears when the LSMO layer is capped with a CeO₂thin layer, which acts as an oxygen reservoir, making this bilayer a proper material choice for encapsulation. A 3-terminal proof of principle device based on Ag/CeO2/LSMO/CeO2/Ag will be presented.

We believe that these results contribute to a better understanding of the physical mechanism behind the robust RS effect of these metallic perovskite oxides films.