Vibrational fingerprints of ferroelectric HfO2

Abstract

Hafnia (HfO2) is a promising material for emerging chip applications due to its high-κ dielectric behavior, suitability for negative capacitance heterostructures, scalable ferroelectricity, and silicon compatibility. The lattice dynamics along with phononic properties such as thermal conductivity, contraction, and heat capacity are under-explored, primarily due to the absence of high quality single crystals. Herein, we report the vibrational properties of a series of HfO2 crystals stabilized with yttrium (chemical formula HfO2: xY, where x = 20, 12, 11, 8, and 0%) and compare our findings with a symmetry analysis and lattice dynamics calculations. We untangle the effects of Y by testing our calculations against the measured Raman and infrared spectra of the cubic, antipolar orthorhombic, and monoclinic phases and then proceed to reveal the signature modes of polar orthorhombic hafnia. This work provides a spectroscopic fingerprint for several different phases of HfO2 and paves the way for an analysis of mode contributions to high-κ dielectric and ferroelectric properties for chip technologies.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 18, 2022
Source ID
10.1038/s41535-022-00436-8

Entities

People

  • David Vanderbilt
  • Janice L Musfeldt
  • Karin M. Rabe
  • Kiman Park
  • Sang-Wook Cheong
  • Shiyu Fan
  • Sobhit Singh
  • Xianghan Xu
  • Yubo Qi

Tags

Readers

  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Nanoscale Plasmonic Nanotechnology