**Abstract**

Although perovskites are widely employed in other industries such as photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), digital technology is rapidly gaining pace in today's market and shows no signs of abating. As a result, the progress of system memory and memory storage has accelerated into new inventions. The invention of dynamic Random-Access Memory (RAM) in the 1960s laid the groundwork for today's multibillion-dollar memory technology sector. Resistive switching (RS) capabilities of perovskite-based materials such as perovskite oxides and metal halides have been extensively studied. Chemical stability, high endurance, quick writing speed, and strong electronic interaction correlation are some of the benefits of employing perovskites in RS devices. This chapter will investigate the progress of system memory and memory storage employing perovskites, the advantageous properties of perovskites utilized in memory devices, the various types of RS employing perovskites, as well as the research challenges that perovskite-based memory systems face in future commercial development.

**Keywords:** resistive switching, memory devices, memory storage, perovskites, non-volatile

## **1. Introduction**

Perovskites, which have the same crystal structure as calcium titanium oxide (CaTiO3), are semiconductor materials that have gained massive interest in various technology. When exposed to light, the structure and characteristics of these materials allow them to transfer electric change. These materials are very beneficial for system memory and memory storage in computer memory. Perovskites' resistive switching (RS) properties enable fast writing speed and long durability. Thus, RS is employed in the most recent computer memory technology, Resistive Random Access Memory (ReRAM), which is expected to replace flash memory [1, 2].

In memory devices, there are many forms of RS. Bipolar and unipolar switching, write-once-read-many (WORM) [3], and multilevel RS [4] are examples of these. This chapter will discuss the advancements in the use of perovskites for RS memory. Oxide perovskites, halide perovskites, and layered perovskites are some of the

perovskite materials employed in this application. Lastly, some design challenges are discussed, and future work is proposed.

### **2. System memory and memory storage technology**

Digital technology is being employed extensively in today's economy, and it shows no signs of abating. As a result, the progress of system memory and memory storage has accelerated, resulting in new improvements. The system memory is where the computer stores currently running applications and data. On the other hand, memory storage is generally for the goal of orderly retrieval and documentation. **Figure 1** depicts the chronology of the evolution of system memory and memory stage.

In 1932, Gustav Tauchek invented the drum memory technology which marked the beginning of system memory [5, 6]. The drum memory was cylindrical in form, with an outside covering comprised of recordable ferromagnetic elements, and it could store up to 500,000 bits, or 62.5 kilobytes of memory [7]. Eventually, in the mid-1940s, the delay line memory was found, which was a refreshable memory that used sequential access and was constructed of mercury. This unique mercury delay line was capable of transmitting data at a rate of around 5,000,000 binary digits per second. It was not until World War II that the United States Navy adopted the initial drum memory idea and refined it into the magnetic drum memory system. The magnetic core memory was then constructed using tiny toroidal ferrimagnetic ceramic ferrites. The memory was stored via an induced magnetic field, which could store one bit depending on the magnetization direction [8]. Twister memory, which used magnetic tape instead of rings to replace core memory, was introduced in 1968 at Bells Lab but received little attention [9]. The magnetic tape was intentionally chosen to enable magnetization only down the length of the tape. As a result, only one point of the twistor would have the proper field direction to ever get magnetized. On the other hand, bubble memory which is a sort of non-volatile memory employs a small layer

**Figure 1.**

*A timeline depicting the progress of system memory and memory storage over time.*

*Perovskites in Next Generation Memory Devices DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.105360*

of magnetic material in its fabrication due to the influence of an external magnetic field. This contains little magnetized patches known as bubbles or domains, each of which may retain one bit of data [10, 11]. Similarly, bubble memory also suffered the same fate as twister memory since both were eclipsed by the development of dynamic RAM.

The invention of dynamic Random-Access Memory (RAM) in the 1960s laid the groundwork for today's multibillion-dollar memory technology sector. Every sort of memory technology described above is rendered obsolete by the discovery of RAM. The earliest architecture of dynamic RAM was a square array with a capacitor and a transistor for each data bit [12]. In today's technology, a broad range of RAM technologies have been researched for their commercialization potential. The advancement of memory storage technology began in 1976 with the usage of punched cards, with certain holes on them as a set of instructions for digital programs [13]. It was then refined further into punch tapes or paper tapes. Similarly, paper tapes were developed to replace punched cards, which were considerably more convenient since they provided a continuous set of data or instructions without the need to insert punched cards one at a time. The substance used to create the paper tapes was then altered and replaced with magnetic materials.

Magnetic tapes were significantly easier to use and could contain far more data than paper tapes. This has transformed the broadcasting industry by allowing live broadcasts to be recorded and replayed at any time [5]. It was not until 1969 that memory storage technology was substantially influenced by the invention of magnetic discs, which can store databases and vast volumes of data. As a result, floppy discs were inspired by magnetic discs, which were portable and generally available to the public. Flash drives, which are based on Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EPROM) and Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory (EEPROM) technologies, are no longer rare in today's technology [14, 15]. Future predictions for system memory and memory storage technologies have focused on a few advancements, including the ReRAM technology, which was projected to replace flash memory.
