Electrically reversible cracks in an intermetallic film controlled by an electric field.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 29298986.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-017-02454-8 and PMC identifier 5752679.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Cracks in solid-state materials are typically irreversible. Here we report electrically reversible opening and closing of nanoscale cracks in an intermetallic thin film grown on a ferroelectric substrate driven by a small electric field (~0.83 kV/cm). Accordingly, a nonvolatile colossal electroresistance on-off ratio of more than 10<sup>8</sup> is measured across the cracks in the intermetallic film at room temperature. Cracks are easily formed with low-frequency voltage cycling and remain stable when the device is operated at high frequency, which offers intriguing potential for next-generation high-frequency memory applications. Moreover, endurance testing demonstrates that the opening and closing of such cracks can reach over 10<sup>7</sup> cycles under 10-μs pulses, without catastrophic failure of the film.