Progress and future prospects of negative capacitance electronics: A materials perspective

Negative capacitance in ferroelectric materials has been suggested as a solution to reduce the power dissipation of electronics beyond fundamental limits. The discovery of ferroelectricity and negative capacitance in the widely used class of HfO2-based materials has since sparked large research efforts to utilize these effects in ultra-low power transistors. While significant progress has been made in the basic understanding of ferroelectric negative capacitance in recent years, the development of practical devices has seen limited success so far. Here, we present a unique view of the field of negative capacitance electronics from the ferroelectric materials perspective. Starting from the basic principles of ferroelectric negative capacitance, we discuss the desirable characteristics of a negative capacitance material, concluding that HfO2-based ferroelectrics are currently most promising for applications in electronics. However, we emphasize that material non-idealities can complicate and in some cases even inhibit the design and fabrication of practical negative capacitance devices using HfO2-based ferroelectrics. Finally, we review the recent progress on experimental devices and give an outlook on the future direction of the field. In particular, further investigations of the microscopic structure of HfO2-based ferroelectrics are needed to provide an insight into the origin of negative capacitance in this material system and to enable predictive device design.