Resistive Switching Effects of Crystal-Ion-Slicing Fabricated LiNbO₃ Single Crystalline Thin Film on Flexible Polyimide Substrate

The fabrication process and resistive switching properties of flexible single crystalline LiNbO₃ (LN) thin films are reported in this paper. Single crystalline LN thin films are transferred onto polyimide (PI) substrate by crystal-ion-slicing (CIS) technique using benzocyclobutene (BCB) as bonding layer. Low energy Ar⁺ irradiation is carried out to introduce a layer with high concentration oxygen vacancies. Uniform and stable resistive switching behaviors are observed in different memristor cells on the same thin film, which can be attributed to the single crystalline properties of the fabricated LN thin films. The on/off ratio is almost the same even when the LN thin film is bended either to different radii or thousand times. Thus, based on CIS technique and Ar⁺ irradiation, the fabrication method of flexible single crystalline thin films for flexible memristor is established. These results indicate that single crystalline LN thin film on PI substrate is a promising candidate structure for flexible memristor devices. A novel conduction model combined filamentary mechanism and Schottky emission mechanism is proposed to explain the resistive switching behavior.