Physical Mechanisms behind the Field‐Cycling Behavior of HfO2‐Based Ferroelectric Capacitors

By M. Pešić, F. Fengler, Luca Larcher, Andrea Padovani, Tony Schenk, E. Grimley, Xiahan Sang, James M. LeBeau, Stefan Slesazeck, Uwe Schroeder and 1 more. 2016

812 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Novel hafnium oxide (HfO2)‐based ferroelectrics reveal full scalability and complementary metal oxide semiconductor integratability compared to perovskite‐based ferroelectrics that are currently used in nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memories (FeRAMs). Within the lifetime of the device, two main regimes of wake‐up and fatigue can be identified. Up to now, the mechanisms behind these two device stages have not been revealed. Thus, the main scope of this study is an identification of the root cause for the increase of the remnant polarization during the wake‐up phase and subsequent polarization degradation with further cycling. Combining the comprehensive ferroelectric switching current experiments, Preisach density analysis, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) study with compact and Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) modeling, it has been found out that during the wake‐up of the device no new defects are generated but the existing defects redistribute within the device. Furthermore, vacancy diffusion has been identified as the main cause for the phase transformation and consequent increase of the remnant polarization. Utilizing trap density spectroscopy for examining defect evolution with cycling of the device together with modeling of the degradation results in an understanding of the main mechanisms behind the evolution of the ferroelectric response.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fcb8c3f30a8fa44cbe9b69a29da12b11eb8336bc

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Atomic Structure of Domain and Interphase Boundaries in Ferroelectric HfO2 (2017, background): “Such an increase in domain uniformity would concomitantly increase the remanent polarization, which is observed during wakeup when field cycling.(15,16,46) Moreover, martensitic phase changes between high symmetry phases and the non-orthogonal monoclinic phase necessitates a shape change.”
Review and perspective on ferroelectric HfO_2-based thin films for memory applications (2018, methodology): “The resulting asymmetric distribution of the oxygen vacancies can be an origin of the internal field in the pristine material.([68]) During the Prospective Article”