Ultra-Thin Ferroelectric Material Could Power Next-Gen Semiconductors

The ferroelectric material, called called hafnium oxide, could improve the performance of next-generation sensors and semiconductors.

AsianScientist (Oct. 20, 2016) – Scientists in Japan have demonstrated the potential of a new, thin-film ferroelectric material that could improve the performance of next-generation sensors and semiconductors. The results of the study were published in Scientific Reports.

Ferroelectric materials can switch between different states of electrical polarization in response to an external electric field. This flexibility means they show promise for many applications, for example in electronic devices and computer memory. Current ferroelectric materials are highly valued for their thermal and chemical stability and rapid electro-mechanical responses, but creating a material that is scalable down to the tiny sizes needed for technologies like silicon-based semiconductors (Si-based CMOS) has proven challenging.

Associate Professor Hiroshi Funakubo and colleagues at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, in collaboration with researchers across Japan, conducted experiments to determine the ferroelectric properties of an inorganic compound called hafnium oxide (HfO2) for the first time. Crucially, the crystal structure of HfO2 allows it to be deposited in ultra-thin films, meaning it may prove invaluable for next-generation technologies.

HfO2 had previously been predicted to exhibit ferroelectric properties through first principle calculations. However, no research team had confirmed and examined these predictions through experiments. Funakubo’s team decided to measure the properties of the material when it was deposited in thin-film crystal form onto a substrate. The precise nature of the crystal structure enabled the researchers to pinpoint the material’s properties in full for the first time.

The researchers found that one particular epitaxial film (a film where the crystals of one substance grow on the crystal face of another substance), labelled YHO-7, exhibited ferroelectricity with a spontaneous polarization of 45 μC/cm and a Curie temperature (the point above which a material stops being ferroelectric due crystal re-structuring) of 450°C.

The researchers are hopeful that their new thin film ferroelectric material will have applications in novel random-access memory and transistors, along with quantum computing.


The article can be found at: Shimizu et al. (2016) The Demonstration of Significant Ferroelectricity in Epitaxial Y-doped HfO2 Film.

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Source: Tokyo Institute of Technology.
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