Impacts to FeRAM Design Arising From Interfacial Dielectric Layers and Wake-Up Modulation in Ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide.

As ferroelectric hafnium zirconium oxide (HZO) becomes more widely utilized in ferroelectric microelectronics, integration impacts of intentional and nonintentional dielectric interfaces and their effects upon the ferroelectric film wake-up (WU) and circuit parameters become important to understand. In this work, the effect of the addition of a linear dielectric aluminum oxide, Al2O3, below a ferroelectric Hf0.58Zr0.42O2 film in a capacitor structure for FeRAM applications with niobium nitride (NbN) electrodes was measured. Depolarization fields resulting from the linear dielectric is observed to induce a reduction of the remanent polarization of the ferroelectric. Addition of the aluminum oxide also impacts the WU of the HZO with respect to the cycling voltage applied. Intricately linked to the design of a FeRAM 1C/1T cell, the metal-ferroelectric-insulator-metal (MFIM) devices are observed to significantly shift charge related to the read states based on aluminum oxide thickness and WU cycling voltage. A 33% reduction in the separation of read states are measured, which complicates how a memory cell is designed and illustrates the importance of clean interfaces in devices.

Infrared Signatures for Phase Identification in Hafnium Oxide Thin Films.

Phase identification in HfO2-based thin films is a prerequisite to understanding the mechanisms stabilizing the ferroelectric phase in these materials, which hold great promise in next-generation nonvolatile memory and computing technology. While grazing-incidence X-ray diffraction is commonly employed for this purpose, it has difficulty unambiguously differentiating between the ferroelectric phase and other metastable phases that may exist due to similarities in the d-spacings, their low intensities, and the overlapping of reflections. Infrared signatures provide an alternative route. However, their use in phase identification remains limited because phase control has overwhelmingly been accomplished via substituents, thereby convoluting infrared signatures between the substituents and the phase changes that they induce. Herein, we report the infrared optical responses of three undoped hafnium oxide films where annealing conditions have been used to create films consisting primarily of the ferroelectric polar orthorhombic Pca21, antipolar orthorhombic Pbca, and monoclinic P21/c phases, as was confirmed via transmission electron microscopy (TEM), UV-visible optical properties, and electrical property measurements. Vibrational signatures acquired from synchrotron nano-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (nano-FTIR) are shown to be capable of differentiating between the phases in a nondestructive, rapid, and nanoscale manner. The utility of nano-FTIR is illustrated for a film exhibiting an antiferroelectric polarization response. In this sample, it is proven that this behavior results from the Pbca phase rather than the often-cited tetragonal phase. By demonstrating that IR spectroscopy can unambiguously distinguish phases in this material, this work establishes a tool needed to isolate the factors dictating the ferroelectric phase stability in HfO2-based materials.

Ferroelectricity in hafnia controlled via surface electrochemical state.

Ferroelectricity in binary oxides including hafnia and zirconia has riveted the attention of the scientific community due to the highly unconventional physical mechanisms and the potential for the integration of these materials into semiconductor workflows. Over the last decade, it has been argued that behaviours such as wake-up phenomena and an extreme sensitivity to electrode and processing conditions suggest that ferroelectricity in these materials is strongly influenced by other factors, including electrochemical boundary conditions and strain. Here we argue that the properties of these materials emerge due to the interplay between the bulk competition between ferroelectric and structural instabilities, similar to that in classical antiferroelectrics, coupled with non-local screening mediated by the finite density of states at surfaces and internal interfaces. Via the decoupling of electrochemical and electrostatic controls, realized via environmental and ultra-high vacuum piezoresponse force microscopy, we show that these materials demonstrate a rich spectrum of ferroic behaviours including partial-pressure-induced and temperature-induced transitions between ferroelectric and antiferroelectric behaviours. These behaviours are consistent with an antiferroionic model and suggest strategies for hafnia-based device optimization.

Phase-Exchange-Driven Wake-Up and Fatigue in Ferroelectric Hafnium Zirconium Oxide Films.

Ferroelectric hafnium zirconium oxide holds great promise for a broad spectrum of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) compatible and scaled microelectronic applications, including memory, low-voltage transistors, and infrared sensors, among others. An outstanding challenge hindering the implementation of this material is polarization instability during field cycling. In this study, the nanoscale phenomena contributing to both polarization fatigue and wake-up are reported. Using synchrotron X-ray diffraction, the conversion of non-polar tetragonal and polar orthorhombic phases to a non-polar monoclinic phase while field cycling devices comprising noble metal contacts is observed. This phase exchange accompanies a diminishing ferroelectric remanent polarization and provides device-scale crystallographic evidence of phase exchange leading to ferroelectric fatigue in these structures. A reduction in the full width at half-maximum of the superimposed tetragonal (101) and orthorhombic (111) diffraction reflections is observed to accompany wake-up in structures comprising tantalum nitride and tungsten electrodes. Combined with polarization and relative permittivity measurements, the observed peak narrowing and a shift in position to lower angles is attributed, in part, to a phase exchange of the non-polar tetragonal to the polar orthorhombic phase during wake-up. These results provide insight into the role of electrodes in the performance of hafnium oxide-based ferroelectrics and mechanisms driving wake-up and fatigue, and demonstrate a non-destructive means to characterize the phase changes accompanying polarization instabilities.