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.

中文翻译：

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硅上一纳米 HfO2 基铁电隧道结

在铁电材料中，自发的对称性破坏导致可切换的电极化，这为非易失性存储器提供了重要的前景。特别是，铁电隧道结 (FTJ) 已作为一种新的电阻开关存储器出现，它利用了穿过薄铁电势垒的极化相关隧道电流。这项工作将 FTJ 与仅 1 nm 厚度的互补金属氧化物半导体兼容的 Zr 掺杂 HfO ₂ (Zr:HfO ₂ ) 铁电势垒集成在一起，通过原子层沉积在硅上生长。这些 1 nm Zr:HfO _{2隧道结表现出大的极化驱动电阻 (>20 000%)，这是 HfO 2}报道的最大值- 基于 FTJ。此外，由于只有 1 nm 的铁电势垒，这些结在低读取电压下提供大的隧穿电流（>1 A cm ^-2），比报道的更厚的基于 HfO ₂的 FTJ 大几个数量级。因此，这种原理验证演示提供了一种同时克服原型 FTJ 的三个主要缺点的方法：Si 兼容的超薄铁电体、大电阻和用于高速操作的大读取电流。