Ferroelectricity of hafnium oxide-based materials: Current status and future prospects from physical mechanisms to device applications

Abstract

The finding of the robust ferroelectricity in HfO2-based thin films is fantastic from the view point of both the fundamentals and the applications. In this review article, the current research status of the future prospects for the ferroelectric HfO2-based thin films and devices are presented from fundamentals to applications. The related issues are discussed, which include: 1) The ferroelectric characteristics observed in HfO2-based films and devices associated with the factors of dopant, strain, interface, thickness, defect, fabrication condition, and more; 2) physical understanding on the observed ferroelectric behaviors by the density functional theory (DFT)-based theory calculations; 3) the characterizations of microscopic and macroscopic features by transmission electron microscopes-based and electrical properties-based techniques; 4) modeling and simulations, 5) the performance optimizations, and 6) the applications of some ferroelectric-based devices such as ferroelectric random access memory, ferroelectric-based field effect transistors, and the ferroelectric tunnel junction for the novel information processing systems.