Bipolar resistance-switching materials allowing intermediate states of wide-varying resistance values hold the potential of drastically reduced power for non-volatile memory. To exploit this potential, we have introduced into a nanometallic resistance-random-access-memory (RRAM) device an asymmetric dynamic load, which can reliably lower switching power by orders of magnitude. The dynamic load is highly resistive during on-switching allowing access to the highly resistive intermediate states; during off-switching the load vanishes to enable switching at low voltage. This approach is entirely scalable and applicable to other bipolar RRAM with intermediate states. The projected power is 12?nW for a 100 × 100?nm2 device and 500?pW for a 10 × 10?nm2 device. The dynamic range of the load can be increased to allow power to be further decreased by taking advantage of the exponential decay of wave-function in a newly discovered nanometallic random material, reaching possibly 1?pW for a 10×10?nm2 nanometallic RRAM device.. ? 2012 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved
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