Bilayer-Based Antiferroelectric HfZrO₂ Tunneling Junction With High Tunneling Electroresistance and Multilevel Nonvolatile Memory

Abstract

The bilayer-based Antiferroelectric Tunneling Junction (AFTJ) with ferroelectric (FE) HfZrO₂ (HZO) and dielectric (DE) Al₂O₃ demonstrates a current ratio of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt; 100\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, a TER (tunneling electroresistance) of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt; 50\times $ </tex-math></inline-formula>, multilevel states, <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$&gt; 10^{4}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> sec retention, and a cycling endurance as high as 10⁸. The concept of tunneling current through DE in an antiferroelectric (AFE) system enhances the capacity to modulate the current/TER ratio and makes the AFTJ feasible for low-power crossbar eNVM (embedded nonvolatile memory) applications.