Sub-Nanosecond Switching of Si:HfO Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistor.

The discovery of ferroelectric doped HfO enabled the emergence of scalable and CMOS-compatible ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) technology which has the potential to meet the growing need for fast, low-power, low-cost, and high-density nonvolatile memory, and neuromorphic devices. Although HfO FeFETs have been widely studied in the past few years, their fundamental switching speed is yet to be explored. Importantly, the shortest polarization time demonstrated to date in HfO-based FeFET was ∼10 ns. Here, we report that a single subnanosecond pulse can fully switch HfO-based FeFET. We also study the polarization switching kinetics across 11 orders of magnitude in time (300 ps to 8 s) and find a remarkably steep time-voltage relation, which is captured by the classical nucleation theory across this wide range of pulse widths. These results demonstrate the high-speed capabilities of FeFETs and help better understand their fundamental polarization switching speed limits and switching kinetics.