Guidelines for the stabilization of a polar rhombohedral phase in epitaxial Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 thin films

The unconventional Si-compatible ferroelectricity in hafnia-based systems, which becomes robust only at nanoscopic sizes, has attracted a lot of interest. While a metastable polar orthorhombic (o-) phase (Pca2(1)) is widely regarded as the responsible phase for ferroelectricity, a higher energy polar rhombohedral (r-) phase is recently reported on epitaxial HfZrO4 (HZO) films grown on (001) SrTiO3 (R3m or R3), (0001) GaN (R3), and Si (111). Armed with results on these systems, here we report a systematic study leading toward identifying comprehensive global trends for stabilizing r-phase polymorphs in epitaxially grown HZO thin films (6 nm) on various substrates (perovskites, hexagonal and Si).