Enhancement of Switching Characteristics in Protonic ECRAM through Density-controlled ZrO2 electrolyte via Low-Temperature Atomic Layer Deposition

Proton-based electrochemical random-access memory (H-ECRAM) has attracted attention as a promising emerging memory for neuromorphic computing due to its analog conductance modulation and high energy efficiency. Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is attractive due to its excellent conformality and scalability. However, the inherently high density of ALD-grown electrolyte films limits ionic transport, leading to degraded switching performance of H-ECRAM. In this work, we address this issue by engineering the density of ZrO2 electrolytes through low-temperature ALD. By reducing the deposition temperature, the film density is effectively decreased and density-controlled ZrO2 electrolyte exhibits significantly improved ionic mobility. It contributes to a substantial enhancement in switching characteristics, such as larger conductance modulation, an improved on/off ratio, and enhanced weight update linearity. These results show a feasibility that density-controlled ALD electrolyte can offer potential for scalable and high-performance neuromorphic hardware.