Electron traps in HfO₂-based ferroelectric layers are known to be a major performance-degrading factor. We use room temperature charge injection and photodepopulation techniques to reveal the trap density and energy distribution in ferroelectric HfO₂ and HfZrO₄. The concentration of occupied electron traps is in the order of 10¹⁹ cm⁻³ for all analyzed samples which provides the lower limit of the defect concentration in the film. Energy distributions universally exhibit three characteristic optical energy levels: around 2 eV, 3 eV, and 4 eV below the HfO₂ conduction band edge. The latter energy level was not observed previously and, according to previous DFT calculations, is too deep to be either of polaronic or O-vacancy-related nature. Nevertheless, the trap energy spectrum remains very similar in all studied samples suggesting the same sorts of the dominant electron traps both in HfO₂ and HfZrO₄ probably related to intrinsic defects of the HfO₂ sub-network.

_{已知基于 HfO 2}的铁电层中的电子陷阱是主要的性能退化因素。我们使用室温电荷注入和光解技术来揭示铁电 HfO ₂和 HfZrO ₄中的陷阱密度和能量分布。对于所有分析的样品，占据电子陷阱的浓度在10 ¹⁹  cm ^-3的数量级，这提供了膜中缺陷浓度的下限。能量分布普遍表现出三个特征光能级：低于 HfO _{2约 2 eV、3 eV 和 4 eV}导带边缘。后一种能级以前没有观察到，并且根据以前的 DFT 计算，它太深而不能成为极化子或 O-空位相关的性质。尽管如此，陷阱能谱在所有研究样品中仍然非常相似，这表明 HfO ₂和 HfZrO ₄中的相同类型的主要电子陷阱可能与 HfO ₂子网络的固有缺陷有关。