Developing fatigue-resistant ferroelectrics using interlayer sliding switching

Abstract

Ferroelectric materials have switchable electrical polarization that is appealing for high-density nonvolatile memories. However, inevitable fatigue hinders practical applications of these materials. Fatigue-free ferroelectric switching could dramatically improve the endurance of such devices. We report a fatigue-free ferroelectric system based on the sliding ferroelectricity of bilayer 3R molybdenum disulfide (3R-MoS₂). The memory performance of this ferroelectric device does not show the wake-up effect at low cycles or a substantial fatigue effect after 10⁶ switching cycles under different pulse widths. The total stress time of the device under an electric field is up to 10⁵ s, which is long relative to other devices. Our theoretical calculations reveal that the fatigue-free feature of sliding ferroelectricity is due to the immobile charge defects in sliding ferroelectricity.