Significant Reliability Improvement by Inducing Dual Atomic-Thin Titanium Intercalation Layers in Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 Films

This work studies the ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) thin film with various designs of intercalation layers. Among the studied intercalation stacks, HZO films with dual similar to 0.05 nm titanium layers (DL-Ti) present ultrahigh remanent polarization (2P(r) similar to 57 mu C/cm(2)), a low coercive field (E-c similar to 1.1 MV/cm), and a high breakdown field (E-BD similar to 4.3 MV/cm). Wherein, a rather low E-c/E-BD of 27% can greatly benefit endurance property. In comparison to the standard HZO films, 3 orders better endurance (>10(10) cycles @3 MV/cm) has been achieved in DL-Ti HZO films, while only 3% Pr degradation can be observed even after 10(7) cycles (@125 degrees C). Our results strongly indicate that atomic layer doping is an effective approach to engineer HZO-based devices with better performance and robust reliabilities.

Automated summary

This work focuses on studying the ferroelectric Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) thin film with different designs of intercalation layers. Among the various intercalation stacks studied, HZO films with dual 0.05 nm titanium layers (DL-Ti) demonstrate ultrahigh remanent polarization (2P(r) ~ 57 μC/cm²), low coercive field (E-c ~ 1.1 MV/cm), and high breakdown field (E-BD ~ 4.3 MV/cm). The results show that atomic layer doping is an effective approach to engineer better performance and robust reliability in HZO-based devices.