Abstract:
Hafnium-based ferroelectric films are compatible with conventional CMOS processing and have good ferroelectric properties at ultra-thin film with thicknesses down to 1 nm. Flexible hafnium-based ferroelectric memories will breathe new life into flexible electronic systems. However, low remnant polarization and poor endurances are common problems faced by hafnium zirconium oxide (HZO) flexible ferroelectric memories. In this study, a ferroelectric memory with W/TiN/HZO/TiN/Al
2O
3/Mica structure was prepared after depositing an alumina buffer layer on the mica substrate. The flexible ferroelectric memory exhibits ‘wake-up’ free feature, with a double remnant polarization as high as 44 μC/cm
2, and can withstand repeated writing and erasing of at least 10
9 times under ±3 MV/cm. With bending radius as low as 3 mm and up to 5,000 bending cycles, both the remnant polarization and coercive field of the device do not decay, demonstrating a good bending reliability. Further studies show that the alumina buffer layer can effectively solve the cracking problem caused by the stress mismatch between the layers. Moreover, the orthorhombic phase in HZO exists and accounts for a large proportion. These may be important factors in determining the high polarization and high device reliability.