Comprehensive Investigation of Constant Voltage Stress Time-Dependent Breakdown and Cycle-to-Breakdown Reliability in Y-Doped and Si-Doped HfO2 Metal-Ferroelectric-Metal Memory

Ting-Yu Chang; Kuan-Chi Wang; Hsien-Yang Liu; Jing-Hua Hseun; Wei-Cheng Peng; Nicolò Ronchi; Umberto Celano; Kaustuv Banerjee; Jan Van Houdt; Tian-Li Wu

doi:10.3390/nano13142104

Comprehensive Investigation of Constant Voltage Stress Time-Dependent Breakdown and Cycle-to-Breakdown Reliability in Y-Doped and Si-Doped HfO₂ Metal-Ferroelectric-Metal Memory

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2023 Jul 19;13(14):2104. doi: 10.3390/nano13142104.

Authors

Ting-Yu Chang¹, Kuan-Chi Wang¹, Hsien-Yang Liu², Jing-Hua Hseun³, Wei-Cheng Peng¹, Nicolò Ronchi⁴, Umberto Celano^{4

5}, Kaustuv Banerjee⁴, Jan Van Houdt^{4

6}, Tian-Li Wu^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ International College of Semiconductor Technology, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan.
² Institute of Electronics, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan.
³ Institute of Pioneer Semiconductor Innovation, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan.
⁴ Imec, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
⁵ School of Electrical, Computer and Energy Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.
⁶ Department of Physics and Astronomy, KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.

Abstract

In this study, we comprehensively investigate the constant voltage stress (CVS) time-dependent breakdown and cycle-to-breakdown while considering metal-ferroelectric-metal (MFM) memory, which has distinct domain sizes induced by different doping species, i.e., Yttrium (Y) (Sample A) and Silicon (Si) (Sample B). Firstly, Y-doped and Si-doped HfO₂ MFM devices exhibit domain sizes of 5.64 nm and 12.47 nm, respectively. Secondly, Si-doped HfO₂ MFM devices (Sample B) have better CVS time-dependent breakdown and cycle-to-breakdown stability than Y-doped HfO₂ MFM devices (Sample A). Therefore, a larger domain size showing higher extrapolated voltage under CVS time-dependent breakdown and cycle-to-breakdown evaluations was observed, indicating that the domain size crucially impacts the stability of MFM memory.

Keywords: domain size; ferroelectric; reliability.

Grants and funding

This work was financially supported by the “Advanced Semiconductor Technology Research Center” from The Featured Areas Research Center Program within the framework of the Higher Education Sprout Project by the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan. This work was also partly supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant MOST 111-2634-F-A49-008, 111-2622-8-A49-018-SB, and 112-2636-E-A49-005.