HfO2–ZrO2 Ferroelectric Capacitors with Superlattice Structure: Improving Fatigue Stability, Fatigue Recovery, and Switching Speed

HfO2–ZrO2 ferroelectric films have recently gained considerable attention from integrated circuit researchers due to their excellent ferroelectric properties over a wide doping range and low deposition temperature. In this work, different HfO2–ZrO2 superlattice (SL) FE films with varying periodicity of HfO2 (5 cycles)–ZrO2 (5 cycles) (SL5), HfO2 (10 cycles)–ZrO2 (10 cycles) (SL10), and HfO2 (15 cycles)–ZrO2 (15 cycles) (SL15) were studied systematically. The HfZrOx (HZO) alloy was used as a comparison device. The SL5 film demonstrated improved ferroelectric properties compared to the HZO film, with the 2 times remnant polarization (2Pr) values increasing from 41.4 to 48.6 μC/cm2 at an applied voltage of 3 V/10 kHz. Furthermore, the first-order reversal curve diagrams of different SL and HZO capacitors at different states (initial, wake-up, fatigue, and recovery) were measured. The SL capacitors were found to effectively suppress the diffusion of defects during P–V cycling, resulting in improved fatigue stability characteristics and fatigue recovery capability compared to the HZO capacitor. Moreover, an improved switching speed of the SL films compared to the HZO capacitor was concluded based on the inhomogeneous field mechanism (IFM) model. These results indicate that the SL structure has a high potential in future high-speed ferroelectric memory applications with excellent stability and recovery capability.