Synthesis of large-area multilayer hexagonal boron nitride sheets on iron substrates and its use in resistive switching devices

Hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) is an attractive insulating material for nanoelectronic devices due to its high reliability as dielectric and excellent compatibility with other two dimensional (2D) materials (e.g. graphene, MoS2). Multilayer h-BN stacks have been readily grown on Cu and Pt substrates via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) approach, confirming its potential for wafer scale integration. However, the growth of h-BN on other substrates needs to be also achieved in order to expand the use of this material. Recently, the CVD growth of monolayer h-BN on Fe substrates was reported, but it just focused on material structure characterization. Here we present the first fabrication of electronic devices using multilayer h-BN dielectric stacks grown on Fe foils. We fabricate and characterize resistive switching (RS) devices based on Au/Ag/h-BN/Fe nanojunctions, and observe the coexistence of both volatile and non-volatile RS depending on the electrode to which the bias is applied. The characteristics measured agree well with those simulated via SIM2RRAM software and QPC modeling, and the cycle-to-cycle variability is slightly lower than that of transition metal oxide based RS devices.