On the stabilization of ferroelectric negative capacitance in nanoscale devices.

Recently, the proposal to use voltage amplification from ferroelectric negative capacitance (NC) to reduce the power dissipation in nanoelectronic devices has attracted significant attention. Homogeneous Landau theory predicts, that by connecting a ferroelectric in series with a dielectric capacitor, a hysteresis-free NC state can be stabilized in the ferroelectric below a critical film thickness. However, there is a strong discrepancy between experimental results and the current theory. Here, we present a comprehensive revision of the theory of NC stabilization with respect to scaling of material and device dimensions based on multi-domain Ginzburg-Landau theory. It is shown that the use of a metal layer in between the ferroelectric and the dielectric will inherently destabilize NC due to domain formation. However, even without this metal layer, domain formation can reduce the critical ferroelectric thickness considerably, limiting not only the range of NC stabilization, but also the maximum amplification attainable. To overcome these obstacles, the downscaling of lateral device dimensions is proposed as a way to prevent domain formation and to enhance the voltage amplification due to NC. These insights will be crucial for future NC device design and scaling towards nanoscale dimensions.

Lanthanum-Doped Hafnium Oxide: A Robust Ferroelectric Material.

Recently simulation groups have reported the lanthanide series elements as the dopants that have the strongest effect on the stabilization of the ferroelectric non-centrosymmetric orthorhombic phase in hafnium oxide. This finding confirms experimental results for lanthanum and gadolinium showing the highest remanent polarization values of all hafnia-based ferroelectric films until now. However, no comprehensive overview that links structural properties to the electrical performance of the films in detail is available for lanthanide-doped hafnia. La:HfO2 appears to be a material with a broad window of process parameters, and accordingly, by optimization of the La content in the layer, it is possible to improve the performance of the material significantly. Variations of the La concentration leads to changes in the crystallographic structure in the bulk of the films and at the interfaces to the electrode materials, which impacts the spontaneous polarization, internal bias fields, and with this the field cycling behavior of the capacitor structure. Characterization results are compared to other dopants like Si, Al, and Gd to validate the advantages of the material in applications such as semiconductor memory devices.

Complex Internal Bias Fields in Ferroelectric Hafnium Oxide.

For the rather new hafnia- and zirconia-based ferroelectrics, a lot of questions are still unsettled. Among them is the electric field cycling behavior consisting of (1) wake-up, (2) fatigue, and (3) the recently discovered subcycling-induced split-up/merging effect of transient current peaks in a hysteresis measurement. In the present work, first-order reversal curves (FORCs) are applied to study the evolution of the switching and backswitching field distribution within the frame of the Preisach model for three different phenomena: (1) The pristine film contains two oppositely biased regions. These internal bias fields vanish during the wake-up cycling. (2) Fatigue as a decrease in the number of switchable domains is accompanied by a slight increase in the mean absolute value of the switching field. (3) The split-up effect is shown to also be related to local bias fields in a complex situation resulting from both the field cycling treatment and the measurement procedure. Moreover, the role of the wake-up phenomenon is discussed with respect to optimizing low-voltage operation conditions of ferroelectric memories toward reasonably high and stable remanent polarization and highest possible endurance.

Electric field cycling behavior of ferroelectric hafnium oxide.

HfO2 based ferroelectrics are lead-free, simple binary oxides with nonperovskite structure and low permittivity. They just recently started attracting attention of theoretical groups in the fields of ferroelectric memories and electrostatic supercapacitors. A modified approach of harmonic analysis is introduced for temperature-dependent studies of the field cycling behavior and the underlying defect mechanisms. Activation energies for wake-up and fatigue are extracted. Notably, all values are about 100 meV, which is 1 order of magnitude lower than for conventional ferroelectrics like lead zirconate titanate (PZT). This difference is mainly atttributed to the one to two orders of magnitude higher electric fields used for cycling and to the different surface to volume ratios between the 10 nm thin films in this study and the bulk samples of former measurements or simulations. Moreover, a new, analog-like split-up effect of switching peaks by field cycling is discovered and is explained by a network model based on memcapacitive behavior as a result of defect redistribution.