Electrically driven non-volatile resistance switching between charge density wave states at room temperature

Abstract: Control over the novel quantum states that emerge from non-equilibrium conditions is of both fundamental and technological importance. Metastable charge density wave (CDW) states are particularly interesting as their electrical manipulation could lead to ultra-efficient memory devices. However, the ability to use electrical pulses for non-volatile resistance switching involving CDW states is exceedingly rare and has been limited to cryogenic temperatures. In this work, we investigate a recently discovered layered semiconductor EuTe4 that exhibits competition between distinct CDW orders that are susceptible to optical manipulation. We report that electrical pulses can be used for excitation to hidden, yet stable electronic states over a broad temperature range between 6 K and 400 K. We find that resistance switching is driven primarily by an electrical field and is fully reversible via a thermal erase procedure. Our experiments show that the pathway for switching is both fast and non-thermal. The resistance of the new electronic state is tuneable by the electrical pulse voltage, so the electronic device acts as a memristor. Our work opens the door for the non-thermal room temperature electrical control of the CDW order and holds great promise for novel memory devices and neuromorphic computing applications.