Single Atomic Layer Ferroelectric on Silicon.

Dogan, Mehmet; Fernandez-Peña, Stéphanie; Kornblum, Lior; Jia, Yichen; Kumah, Divine P; Reiner, James W; Krivokapic, Zoran; Kolpak, Alexie M et al. · Nano Lett · 2018

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

A single atomic layer of ZrO<sub>2</sub> exhibits ferroelectric switching behavior when grown with an atomically abrupt interface on silicon. Hysteresis in capacitance-voltage measurements of a ZrO<sub>2</sub> gate stack demonstrate that a reversible polarization of the ZrO<sub>2</sub> 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).