Non‐Volatile Ferroelectric Memory with Position‐Addressable Polymer Semiconducting Nanowire

Abstract

One-dimensional nanowires (NWs) have been extensively examined for numerous potential nano-electronic device applications such as transistors, sensors, memories, and photodetectors. The ferroelectric-gate field effect transistors (Fe-FETs) with semiconducting NWs in particular in combination with ferroelectric polymers as gate insulating layers have attracted great attention because of their potential in high density memory integration. However, most of the devices still suffer from low yield of devices mainly due to the ill-control of the location of NWs on a substrate. NWs randomly deposited on a substrate from solution-dispersed droplet made it extremely difficult to fabricate arrays of NW Fe-FETs. Moreover, rigid inorganic NWs were rarely applicable for flexible non-volatile memories. Here, we present the NW Fe-FETs with position-addressable polymer semiconducting NWs. Polymer NWs precisely controlled in both location and number between source and drain electrode were achieved by direct electrohydrodynamic NW printing. The polymer NW Fe-FETs with a ferroelectric poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-trifluoroethylene) exhibited non-volatile ON/OFF current margin at zero gate voltage of approximately 10(2) with time-dependent data retention and read/write endurance of more than 10(4) seconds and 10(2) cycles, respectively. Furthermore, our device showed characteristic bistable current hysteresis curves when being deformed with various bending radii and multiple bending cycles over 1000 times.

Side‐Gated In2O3 Nanowire Ferroelectric FETs for High‐Performance Nonvolatile Memory Applications

“…Although the gate pulses used in the dynamic characteristic test are much shorter than those used in stability and endurance tests, a dynamic retention ratio of about 10 5 is still observed under V ds of 0.1 V. Here we also studied the current dynamics of devices with the same D and different W (see Figure S6 in the Supporting Information), the result is in good agreement with our discussion about the impact of different gate sizes. All these results demonstrate an excellent nonvolatility memory behavior of our side‐gated FeFETs, by reference to ferroelectric memory with top‐gated or back‐gated structure in previous works 5, 13, 17, 28, 36…”

“…It is also noted that our side‐gated devices exhibit excellent performances at room temperature and in ambient air. The leakage current, on/off current ratio, and subthreshold slope ( SS ) all present superior values as compared with those of NW‐based FeFETs reported previously 5, 12, 13, 17, 27. Also, the memory hysteresis characteristics can be effectively controlled by adjusting the side‐gated geometrical parameters.…”

“…Until now, among all promising ferroelectric materials explored in FeFETs, organic ferroelectric polymers contain the exceptional advantages of light weight, mechanical flexibility, and low‐temperature solution‐base processing, which are ideal for the large area technological utilizations 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Poly(vinylidene fluoride‐trifluoroethylene) (P(VDF‐TrFE)) copolymer is one of the typical organic ferroelectric polymers that is frequently employed in various nanoelectronic devices because of its room temperature ferroelectricity, large remnant polarization, and easy forming process with the required annealing temperature below 140 °C 11, 12, 13, 14. Importantly, the stable remnant polarization of the P(VDF‐TrFE) dielectric layer can enable an ultrahigh local electrostatic field in the semiconductor channel, which is much larger than that produced by the gate bias in traditional field‐effect transistors;15, 16 in this case, the transport properties of the channel can be effectively modulated under a relatively low gate bias or even stayed in depletion or accumulation state after the gate bias is removed.…”

Study of harsh environment operation of flexible ferroelectric memory integrated with PZT and silicon fabric

“…10 Exciting progress has been achieved in flexible electronics 11,12 and ferroelectric flexible memories with organic materials research due to the natural flexibility of the material systems. [13][14][15][16][17][18][19] Nonetheless, key fundamental challenges exist with organic electronics related to their limited thermal budget and operation stability. 16 Another challenge is their ultra-large-scale-integration potential where memory devices must be ultra-scaled for ultra-high-density memory.…”

“…Actually, most of the reported functional polymer based flexible FeRAMs over the past five years fall within the 7-8 lC/cm 2 P r range at room temperature. [16][17][18][19] Figure 4(c) depicts the reduction in memory window as a function of increased temperature. In supplementary Figure S2, we have shown representative memory window extraction plots at various temperatures.…”