Ferroelectric MXene-assisted BiFeO₃ based free-standing memristors for multifunctional non-volatile memory storage

Extensive research focuses on 2D MXenes ascribed to their adaptable behavior under external parameters, intrinsic ferroelectric nature through oxidation and their tailored conductive ability, resulting in exceptional electrochemical and flexible data storage applications. By virtue of these tunable capabilities, titanium carbide Ti₃C₂T_x MXene (M) has been incorporated as electrodes in free-standing novel memory devices comprising of Bismuth Ferrite (BFO), Graphene Oxide (GO) and heated Ti₃C₂T_x MXene (h-M) as active functional layers. These devices, owing to their distinct conduction mechanisms, transform the capacitive like resistive switching in M/BFO/M scheme to pure memristor switching with the addition of GO in M/BFO/GO/M, exhibiting potential ON/OFF ratio along with increased endurance of > 10², the factor crucial for practical implementations. Here also, the assistance of heated Ti₃C₂T_x MXene as an additional active layer with BFO has marked the co-existence of negative differential resistance (NDR) along with resistance switching (RS) as a novel report, observed for the first time in M/BFO/h-M/M. The reproducibility of NDR and RS under 10³ sweeps and three memory architectures with an ON/OFF resistance ratio of 10² have made them emerge as a potential ensemble for multi-level storage and multifunctional characteristics. This work fits the noticeable increase in ON/OFF ratio of M/BFO/h-M/M out of the three explored memristor devices and its current-voltage feature mimicking the charge-discharge response in energy storage domain will pave the way for next generation, non-volatile energy-efficient computing architectures as it holds immense importance for enhancing the density of integrated flexible electronics.