One Nanometer HfO2‐Based Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions on Silicon
Abstract
In ferroelectric materials, spontaneous symmetry breaking leads to a switchable electric polarization, which offers significant promise for nonvolatile memories. In particular, ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) have emerged as a new resistive switching memory which exploits polarization‐dependent tunnel current across a thin ferroelectric barrier. This work integrates FTJs with complementary metal‐oxide‐semiconductor‐compatible Zr‐doped HfO2 (Zr:HfO2) ferroelectric barriers of just 1 nm thickness, grown by atomic layer deposition on silicon. These 1 nm Zr:HfO2 tunnel junctions exhibit large polarization‐driven electroresistance (>20 000%), the largest value reported for HfO2‐based FTJs. In addition, due to just a 1 nm ferroelectric barrier, these junctions provide large tunneling current (>1 A cm−2) at low read voltage, orders of magnitude larger than reported thicker HfO2‐based FTJs. Therefore, this proof‐of‐principle demonstration provides an approach to simultaneously overcome three major drawbacks of prototypical FTJs: a Si‐compatible ultrathin ferroelectric, large electroresistance, and large read current for high‐speed operation.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Sep 29, 2021
- Source ID
- 10.1002/aelm.202100499
Entities
People
- Adhiraj Datar
- Cheng-Hsiang Hsu
- Daewoong Kwon
- Jongho Bae
- Nirmaan Shanker
- Sayeef Salahuddin
- Suraj Cheema
Organizations
- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Office of Basic Energy Sciences
- Office of Science
- Semiconductor Research Corporation
- University of California