Study of Imprint Dynamics in HZO Ferroelectric Capacitors
Résumé
The discovery of the ferroelectric orthorhombic phase in doped HfO2 gave a major boost to the interest for integrated ferroelectric oxides in the CMOS industry [1]. Given its low crystallisation temperature the Hf1-xZrxO2 solid solution (x = 0.5), i.e Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) is an excellent candidate for both front and back-end of line integration of ferroelectric Non-Volatile Memories (NVM) or artificial synapses [2]. Although promising demonstrations of have been disclosed, achieving a stable cycling with minimum imprint behavior remains a significant challenge [3]. Imprint induces as a shift of the Polarization-Voltage (P-V) curve along the voltage axis during a retention stage. The direction in which the hysteresis curve is shifted is dictated by the stored polarization state which can in turn lead to a failure during read operation. In this work, imprint dynamics is studied from 1µs up to 104s in 10nm HZO capacitors with TiN electrodes through a dedicated experimental protocol. In addition, imprint was also investigated on intermediate polarization states. It is shown that P-V curves exhibited a neck suggesting a local rearrangement of electric charges and polarization within ferroelectric domains and/or grains.
References:
[1] T. S. Böscke et al., Applied Physics Letters, 99, p. 102903, (2011)
[2] B. Manchon et al., Physica Status Solidii (RRL), 16, p. 2100585, (2022)
[3] J. Bouaziz et al., Applied Physics Letters, 118, p. 082901, (2021)