In-Plane Ferroelectric Tunnel Junction

Abstract

Ferroelectric materals are an important platform for the realization of nonvolatile memories. So far, existing ferroelectric memory devices have utilized out-of-plane polarization in ferroelectric thin films. In this paper, we propose a type of random-access memory (RAM) based on ferroelectric thin films with in-plane polarization, called an “in-plane ferroelectric tunnel junction.” Apart from nonvolatility, lower power usage, and a faster writing operation compared with traditional dynamic RAMs, our proposal has the advantage of a faster reading operation and a nondestructive reading process, thus overcoming the write-after-read problem that exists widely in current ferroelectric RAMs. The recent discovered room-temperature ferroelectric IV-VI semiconductor thin films are a promising material platform for the realization of our proposal.