Recent Progress of Ferroelectric-Gate Field-Effect Transistors and Applications to Nonvolatile Logic and FeNAND Flash Memory

We have investigated ferroelectric-gate field-effect transistors (FeFETs) with Pt/SrBi₂Ta₂O₉/(HfO₂)x(Al₂O₃)1-x (Hf-Al-O) and Pt/SrBi₂Ta₂O₉/HfO₂ gate stacks. The fabricated FeFETs have excellent data retention characteristics: The drain current ratio between the on- and off-states of a FeFET was more than 2 × 10⁶ after 12 days, and the decreasing rate of this ratio was so small that the extrapolated drain current ratio after 10 years is larger than 1 × 10⁵. A fabricated self-aligned gate Pt/SrBi₂Ta₂O₉/Hf-Al-O/Si FET revealed a sufficiently large drain current ratio of 2.4 × 10⁵ after 33.5 day, which is 6.5 × 10⁴ after 10 years by extrapolation. The developed FeFETs also revealed stable retention characteristics at an elevated temperature up to 120 °C and had small transistor threshold voltage (Vth) distribution. The Vth can be adjusted by controlling channel impurity densities for both n-channel and p-channel FeFETs. These performances are now suitable to integrated circuit application with nonvolatile functions. Fundamental properties for the applications to ferroelectric-CMOS nonvolatile logic-circuits and to ferroelectric-NAND flash memories are demonstrated.