Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing 173 (2024) 108157 1369-8001/© 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. A promising neoteric nominee in memristor family (Li 2 ZnO 2 ): Nonpinched current voltage hysteresis loops and impedance analysis M.S. El-Bana a, b, * , I.M. El Radaf b, c , M.S. Alkhalifah b a Nanoscience & Semiconductor Laboratories, Department of Physics, Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt b Materials Physics and Energy Laboratory, Department of Physics, College of Science and Arts at ArRass - Qassim University, ArRass, 51921, Saudi Arabia c Electron Microscope and Thin Films Department, Physics Division, National Research Centre, Dokki, Giza, 12622, Egypt A R T I C L E INFO Keywords: Ionic conduction in solids Memristive-coupled capacitive Hysteresis loop Electronic device Impedance analysis ABSTRACT Great potential attention has been paid to memristors in the non-volatile memory market where it could lead to novel forms of computing. Also, the metal-oxide-metal system is considered a promising system for non-volatile memories. This comes out from their advantages of owing the merits of both the DRAM and Flash memories while avoiding their drawbacks. Therefore, we have manufactured a new micro-oxide device (Al/Li 2 ZnO 2 /ITO) for the memristors market. Non-pinched crossing current-voltage hysteresis loops have been obtained. These loops have been ascribed to the capacitor-coupled memristive effect. The effect of various stimuli such as electrical field, temperature, and illumination on the investigated device has been studied. In addition, the impedance spectroscopic measurements are investigated under the influence of applying an external electric field. The Nyquist plots revealed that the device can be introduced by a resistance connected in series with a network of both parallel capacitance and parallel resistance. 1. Introduction Since the appearance of the memristor (resistor has a memory), significant interest has been raised in the field of electronic science research. Where it was considered a revolutionary element in the elec- tronics market [1]. This belief comes out from its numerous interesting applications, such as bioinspired computing systems [2–4], analogs for biological synapses [5,6], integrated neural networks [7,8], neuro- morphic computation [9], computational operation [10], artificial in- telligence [9,11], resistive random-access memory (ReRAM or RRAM), and nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM) [12]. The fascinating features of a memristor ascribe to the linkage it makes between charge and magnetic flux in the electronic circuits, where memristor equals (M = dφ dq ) [13]. Strukov et al. [14] introduced an upsurge in memristor research where they reported the main structure of the memristor. They have mentioned that it forms from a sandwich structure, where the top and bottom layers are two conductive electrodes, and the middle layer is either a semiconductor or insulator. This structure represents the upcoming-generation memory where its resistance can be reversibly turned betwixt the low-resistance state (LRS) to the high-resistance state (HRS) under the effect of an electric field [15]. Thus, several materials have been utilized as an intermediate layer in memristor devices such as TiO 2 [16], ferroelectric material [17], amorphous silicon [18], Nb 2 O 5 [19], NiO [20], and zinc oxide (ZnO) [21]. Besides, metal oxides have attracted researchers to be exploited as the middle layer in the mem- ristor unit structure. This returns to their interesting electrical and op- tical properties. They are wide-band gap semiconductors. They are easy to be doped by a variety of impurities and defects. Also, some of them are already self-doped by either vacancy or native interstitial defects [12]. Furthermore, zinc oxide represents an excellent material to be used in micro-electro-mechanical systems due to several interesting character- istics. It showed excellent structure, electrical, and mechanical features [22,23]. Also, it presented good chemical stability, biocompatibility [24], low growth temperature [25], and a direct wide band gap (3.38  3.45 eV) [26,27]. In addition, the memristor can be classified into two categories ac- cording to their I–V curves, type I (zero-crossing) and type II (non-zero crossing). This classification refers to the memristor hysteresis I–V loop that appears after subjecting it to stimuli such as electrical field, tem- perature, moisture, and magnetic field [1]. Type I introduces the fingerprint of the ideal memristor which follows Ohm’s law, i = G . V, where G denotes the memristor conductance, and V refers to the voltage [1]. Therefore, it exhibits a pinched hysteresis loop in the I–V plot which * Corresponding author. Nanoscience & Semiconductor Laboratories, Department of Physics, Faculty of Education, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. E-mail addresses: m.elbana@qu.edu.sa, mohammed.el-bana@bath.edu (M.S. El-Bana). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/mssp https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mssp.2024.108157 Received 5 December 2023; Received in revised form 3 January 2024; Accepted 19 January 2024