Multibit ferroelectric field-effect transistor with epitaxial-like Pb(Zr,Ti)O3

Being able to control grain boundaries during the phase transformation when processing a ferroelectric thin-film is crucial for the successful development of practical multibit ferroelectric memory. A novel development of ferroelectric thin-film crystallization processing for realizing epitaxial-like single crystals via artificial nucleation by Pt-seeding is reported here. Dividing the nucleation and growth mechanism by Pt-seeding, it is possible to obtain large and uniform rectangular-shaped ferroelectric grains, large enough to fabricate a field-effect transistor (FET) in the inside of the crystal grain. The fabricated ferroelectric FET, Pt/Pb(Zr,Ti)O3/ZrTiO4/Si, showed a large memory window (∼2.2 V), a low operation voltage (∼6 V), and an ultra-fast program/erase speed (∼10−6 s). Moreover, there was no degradation after 1015 cycles of bipolar fatigue testing and the sample even showed a long retention time after 1 yr. All of these characteristics correspond to the best performance among all types of fe...