Nanoscale Correlations between Metal–Insulator Transition and Resistive Switching Eect in Metallic Perovskite Oxides

Strongly correlated perovskite oxides are a class of materials with fascinating intrinsic physical functionalities due to the interplay of charge, spin, orbital ordering, and lattice degrees of freedom. Among the exotic phenomena arising from such an interplay, metal–insulator transitions (MITs) are fundamentally still not fully understood and are of large interest for novel nanoelectronics applications, such as resistive switching‐based memories and neuromorphic computing devices. In particular, rare‐earth nickelates and lanthanum strontium manganites are archetypical examples of bandwidth‐controlled and band‐filling‐controlled MIT, respectively, which are used in this work as a playground to correlate the switching characteristics of the oxides and their MIT properties by means of local probe techniques in a systematic manner. These findings suggest that an electric‐field‐induced MIT can be triggered in these strongly correlated systems upon generation of oxygen vacancies and establish that lower operational voltages and larger resistance ratios are obtained in those films where the MIT lies closer to room temperature. This work demonstrates the potential of using MITs in the next generation of nanoelectronics devices.The authors acknowledge financial support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (Grant no. SEV‐2015‐0496), CONSOLIDER Excellence Network (Grant no. MAT2015‐68994‐REDC), COACHSUPENERGY project (Grant no. MAT2014‐56063‐C2‐1‐R, and SuMaTe RTI2018‐095853‐B‐C21, cofinanced by the European Regional Development Fund), OXSWITCH project funded by Centro Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC), and from the Catalan Government with Grant no. 2017‐SGR‐1519. Authors also thank the network collaboration of EU COST action NANOCOHYBRI CA16218. J.C.G.‐R. thanks Spanish Ministry of Economy for his FPI Spanish grant (Grant no. BES‐2012‐053814). The authors also acknowledge the Scientific Services at ICMAB, specially A. Gómez from the atomic force microscopy service.Peer reviewe