Engineering stable conductive filament formation in MoS2 resistive random access memory via process-controlled metal incorporation into defects for enhanced electrochemical metallization switching

The fabrication and optimization of molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) resistive random access memory (RRAM) are investigated to achieve stable and reliable resistive switching. To control the inherently random filament formation, RRAM devices were fabricated in conjunction with systematic process control, followed by a comprehensive performance evaluation. In our work, the deposition rate of the top electrode during e-beam evaporation was tuned to fabricate MoS2 RRAM devices. This approach enabled control over the degree of metal incorporation into defects, leading to stable filament formation. As a result, the optimized devices exhibited excellent performance, including a large memory window of 104, low operating voltage variability, stable retention for 2000 s, and reliable endurance over 104 switching cycles. Furthermore, temperature-dependent resistance measurements and conduction mechanism analysis confirmed stable filament formation consistent with the electrochemical metallization mechanism. These results demonstrate that precise process control facilitates stable filament formation, which in turn ensures reliable device performance.