Room temperature ferroelectricity in pulsed laser deposited rare-earth doped hafnium oxide (HfO 2 ) thin films is discussed. Maximum values of remnant polarizations (P r ) ∼13.5 and 12 μC/cm 2 along with coercive fields (E C ) ∼334 and 384 kV/cm are observed in 6 mol. % of rare-earth (Sm or Gd) doped-HfO 2 thin films (Sm:HfO 2 and Gd:HfO 2 ), respectively. Piezoresponse force microscopy measurements confirmed ferroelectric nature of films by showing phase hysteresis and butterfly amplitude loops. It is noticed that wake-up cycles improved the remnant polarization and found to be necessary for the forming of well saturated hysteresis loops. Our results showed potential toward realization of future highly scaled non-volatile ferroelectric memories. Ferroelectric materials are engendering considerable interest because of a variety of emerging applications including ferroelectric memories which have promising potentials for next generation high integration density and low power nonvolatile memory technology.
1,2The most studied material for ferroelectric memories, Pb[Zr x Ti 1-x ]O 3 (PZT), 1 is facing severe scaling limitations due to its complicated crystal structure which in turn hinders its applicability toward dense integration in the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The lead (Pb) toxicity in PZT is also a snag due to ecological concerns.Recently, experimental as well as theoretical studies showed ferroelectricity in doped hafnia (HfO 2 ) thin films which are compatible with existing CMOS technology.3-10 Ferroelectric phenomenon in these doped-HfO 2 films deposited by various deposition techniques such as atomic layer deposition, 5-10 chemical solution deposition, 11 and sputtering 12 was mainly explained by the existence of noncentrosymmetric orthorhombic phase (space group of Pca2 1 ). 5,6,12 The dopant incorporation into monoclinic HfO 2 matrix results in a transformation to tetragonal/cubic phase with the appearance of an intermediate metastable orthorhombic (Pca2 1 ) phase. On the other hand, in some of the reports, ferroelectric nature in doped-HfO 2 films was attributed to the influence of "wake-up" effect. [11][12][13] In this paper, we report on the ferroelectric properties of rare earth doped Sm:HfO 2 (SHO) and Gd:HfO 2 (GHO) thin films fabricated by the sequential pulsed laser deposition (SPLD) technique. [14][15][16] The deposition was performed by periodic depositions from HfO 2 and Sm 2 O 3 /Gd 2 O 3 ceramic targets. The dopant concentration was obtained by controlling number of Sm 2 O 3 /Gd 2 O 3 ablation pulses relative to that of HfO 2 . To study the ferroelectric properties of the deposited samples, polarization-voltage (P-V), capacitance-voltage (C-V), and piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurements were performed.
ExperimentalPolycrystalline thin films of SHO and GHO of ∼60 nm thickness were fabricated on Pt/TiO 2 /SiO 2 /Si substrates by SPLD technique at a fixed temperature of 650• C and in an oxygen ambient partial pressure of ∼0.5 Pa. The KrF excimer laser...