nl7b03988_si_001.pdf (246.77 kB)
Single Atomic Layer Ferroelectric on Silicon
journal contribution
posted on 2017-12-15, 00:00 authored by Mehmet Dogan, Stéphanie Fernandez-Peña, Lior Kornblum, Yichen Jia, Divine P. Kumah, James W. Reiner, Zoran Krivokapic, Alexie M. Kolpak, Sohrab Ismail-Beigi, Charles H. Ahn, Frederick J. WalkerA single
atomic layer of ZrO2 exhibits ferroelectric
switching behavior when grown with an atomically abrupt interface
on silicon. Hysteresis in capacitance–voltage measurements
of a ZrO2 gate stack demonstrate that a reversible polarization
of the ZrO2 interface structure couples to the carriers
in the silicon. First-principles computations confirm the existence
of multiple stable polarization states and the energy shift in the
semiconductor electron states that result from switching between these
states. This monolayer ferroelectric represents a new class of materials
for achieving devices that transcend conventional complementary metal
oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. Significantly, a single atomic
layer ferroelectric allows for more aggressively scaled devices than
bulk ferroelectrics, which currently need to be thicker than 5–10
nm to exhibit significant hysteretic behavior (Park, et al. Adv. Mater. 2015, 27, 1811).