The effects of proton radiation on aluminum oxide/zirconium-doped hafnium oxide stacked ferroelectric tunneling junctions

Abstract The effects of proton radiation on TiN/Zr-doped-HfO 2 (HZO)/Al 2 O 3 /P + -Ge ferroelectric tunneling junctions are investigated in the present work. The electrical characteristics are measured before and after different proton fluences. The remanent polarization exhibits negligible change, which demonstrates the proton radiation immunity of the ferroelectric material HZO. However, the capacitance, leakage current, endurance, and read current characteristics show obviously changed with the increase of proton fluence. The main reason for this is that proton radiation causes positive fixed charges to form in the Al 2 O 3 layer, interface charges to form in Al 2 O 3 /Ge and the effective carrier concentration to reduce in the Ge substrate.