After the explosive growth of information over the past few decades, the power consumption for data storage and reading is nonnegligible. Traditional metal–insulator–metal (MIM)-based resistive switches (RS) possess a high operating current, which can be read directly without an amplifier yet will inevitably produce large power consumption. Rational control of the energy consumption of RS devices is surely desirable to achieve the energy-efficient purpose in a variety of practical applications.

Recently, the research team of Prof. Xiaohong Zhang (Corresponding Author) and Prof. Jiansheng Jie (Common Corresponding Author) from Soochow University published the paper 'CdS Nanoribbon-Based Resistive Switches with Ultrawidely Tunable Power by Surface Charge Transfer Doping' in Adv. Funct. Mater. They reported an ultrawidely tunable-power RS device based on CdS nanoribbon (NR) with controlled conductivity. Effective doping on the CdS NRs was achieved by a surface charge transfer doping strategy by using MoO3 nanodots (NDs) as surface dopants. With increasing amount of decorated MoO3 NDs, CdS NRs exhibited a transition from insulator to semiconductor and to conductor, revealing a huge resistivity variation from 106 to 10−3 Ω cm. Therefore, CdS NRs could serve as a rheostat in RS device to adjust the power consumption over an ultrawide range from 1 nW (ultralow) to 0.1 mW (a typical power value of RS device with MIM structure). The work paves the way toward the fabrication of semiconductor nanostructure-based nonvolatile RS memory devices with ultrawidely tunable power.