Clay Induced Performance\nEnhancement of a Plant Extract-Based\nWORM and RRAM for Sustainable Data Storage and Neuromorphic Computing\nApplications

Natural plant-material-based memory devices have been\nin the spotlight\ndue to their versatile applications ranging from nonvolatile memory\nto neuromorphic computations. Locally available plant <i>Nymphaea\nnouchali</i>, whose vernacular English name is water lily (WL),\nleaves were used to design a resistive memory device having configuration\nAu/WL/ITO. The device exhibited write-once-read-many (WORM) behavior\nwith memory window (∼10<sup>2</sup>), device yield (∼55%),\nread endurance (8000 times), and data retention (∼500 s). With\nthe incorporation of synthetic clay mineral Laponite along with WL\nin the active layer, the device (Au/WL+Laponite/ITO) exhibited reliable\nresistive random-access memory (RRAM) behavior in addition to WORM\nbased on the measurement protocol. In the Laponite-based device, the\ndevice performances improved significantly with higher retention time\n(up to 10 years), larger memory window (10<sup>4</sup>), greater device\nyield (88%) and higher read endurance (10 000 times). The cycle-to-cycle\nvariability of the RRAM device has also been studied. The conduction\nmechanism of these memory devices is dominated by space charge limited\nconduction, Schottky emission, and conducting filament formation.\nApart from that, in order to investigate the neuromorphic properties,\nseveral preliminary rules like the learning and forgetting nature\nof the RRAM device (potentiation and depression) have also been studied.\nMoreover, the plasticity of the artificial synapse has been studied\nby varying the pulse width, pulse amplitude, and pulse interval. The\nresults suggest that these biodegradable as well as eco-friendly devices\nprovide a greater prospective toward the sustainable electronics with\nRRAM and WORM memory applications as well neuromorphic computation.