A Room‐Temperature Ferroelectric Resonant Tunneling Diode

Abstract

Resonant tunneling is a quantum‐mechanical effect in which electron transport is controlled by the discrete energy levels within a quantum‐well (QW) structure. A ferroelectric resonant tunneling diode (RTD) exploits the switchable electric polarization state of the QW barrier to tune the device resistance. Here, the discovery of robust room‐temperature ferroelectric‐modulated resonant tunneling and negative differential resistance (NDR) behaviors in all‐perovskite‐oxide BaTiO3/SrRuO3/BaTiO3 QW structures is reported. The resonant current amplitude and voltage are tunable by the switchable polarization of the BaTiO3 ferroelectric with the NDR ratio modulated by ≈3 orders of magnitude and an OFF/ON resistance ratio exceeding a factor of 2 × 104. The observed NDR effect is explained an energy bandgap between Ru‐t2g and Ru‐eg orbitals driven by electron–electron correlations, as follows from density functional theory calculations. This study paves the way for ferroelectric‐based quantum‐tunneling devices in future oxide electronics.

Electron and magnon resonant tunneling: materials, physics and devices

“…Intriguingly, the significant NDR effect was achieved through RT between QW states. In addition, the electron RT was also observed in the oxide junctions with confined QW states [31][32][33], defect states [34,35] and charged domain walls [36][37][38][39], and graphene transistor [40].…”

Room-Temperature Quantum Diodes with Dynamic Memory for Neural Logic Operations

“…The relentless pursuit of high-performance next-generation nanoelectronics has led to a focus on harnessing quantum phenomena. In this context, Fowler–Nordheim (F–N) tunneling holds the potential to revolutionize a broad spectrum of applications, ranging from telecommunications to advanced computing. − Indeed, electronic devices incorporating F–N tunnelinga process involving electron transmission through a potential barrierand integrated memory and negative differential resistance (NDR) could provide promising technology that transcends traditional nanoelectronics. − For instance, they could be utilized to emulate the functionality of biological neural networks known as neuromorphic computing. This could offer the essential platform needed to overcome many limitations of conventional computing architectures, such as handling big data and artificial intelligence-related applications. − Up to this point, several strategies have been employed to mimic the fundamental functions of a biosynapse, including memristors with two terminals, transistors with three terminals, and others. ,− While all of these reports are significant, however, to the best of our knowledge, none of the reported devices were shown to utilize F–N tunneling and integrated NDR to emulate bioinspired logic operations, even though it can enable sophisticated and in-material ultrafast intelligent logic operations.…”

Switchable Polar Nanotexture in Nanolaminates HfO2‐ZrO2 for Ultrafast Logic‐in‐Memory Operations

“…Ideally, these nanometer-sized polar textures have the potential to offer an integrated cutting-edge nanoelectronics technology for ultrahigh-density storage with negligible cross-talk between adjacent bits; indeed, capacity of over terabits per square inch, which is significantly denser than the present technology of ferroelectric storage. [2,[7][8][9][10][11] However, the ability to precisely control the order parameters (polarization here) of these topological states in response to external stimuli (i.e., electrical field) is crucial and essential to realizing the potential of polar textures in nanoelectronics and memory storage. Although topological polar nanotextures have recently been observed in superlattices, [1,4] and transferred lead/strontium titanate layer, [2] integrating ultrathin ferroelectric material directly into silicon-based technology using a straightforward growth technique, and utilizing it effectively for multilevel programable memory and processing units has yet to be demonstrated.…”