Atomically Smooth Epitaxial Ferroelectric Thin Films for the Development of a Nonvolatile, Ultrahigh Density, Fast, Low Voltage, Radiation- Hard Memory

摘要

The goal of this research is to fabricate atomically smooth, single crystalline, complex oxide thin film nanostructures for use in a nonvolatile, ultrahigh density, fast, low voltage, radiation-hard memory. For this work, we use complex oxide materials, which possess rich electronic phase diagrams, encompassing metallic, insulating, antiferromagnetic, and ferromagnetic behavior. Complex oxides can also exhibit ferroelectricity, which is characterized by the presence of a non-volatile spontaneous polarization field that is reversible by application of an external electric field. This switchable, bi-stable polarization field is the basis for the nonvolatile memory studied in this work. Advanced physical vapor deposition techniques such as off-axis magnetron sputtering, are used to integrate the rich funtionalities of complex oxides with the ferroelectrics used in this work. For this project, we use the ferroelectric perovskite, pbZrl-xTixO3 (PZT), with the bi-stable spontaneous polarization field of PZT being used to tune the electronic behavior of all-complex oxide field effect structures.