Quasi-Nondestructive Read Out of Ferroelectric Capacitor Polarization by Exploiting a 2TnC Cell to Relax the Endurance Requirement
Yi Xiao, Shan Deng, Zijian Zhao, Zubair Faris, Yixin Xu, Tzu‐Jung Huang, Vijaykrishnan Narayanan, Kai Ni
Abstract
In this work, we exploit a 2TnC ferroelectric random access memory (FeRAM) cell design to realize the quasi-nondestructive readout (QNRO) of ferroelectric polarization ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${P}_{\text{FE}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) in a capacitor, which can relax the endurance requirement of the ferroelectric thin film and exploits the benefits of both FeRAM and ferroelectric FET (FeFET). We demonstrate that: i) QNRO sensing of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${P}_{\text{FE}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> is conducted successfully in experiment with a ON/OFF ratio ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text{ON}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> / <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text{OFF}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ) > 103, <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${I}_{\text{ON}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$ > 10~\mu \text{A}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> , and read endurance > 106 cycles, which can relax the FeRAM endurance requirement by 10 <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^{\mathrm{ 6}}\text{x}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ; ii) optimization of the cell performance can be realized by tuning the metal-ferroelectric-metal capacitor (MFM) capacitor to read transistor area ratio and read transistor threshold voltage ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${V}_{\text{TH}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ); iii) the 2TnC cell structure is 3D-compatible, enabling integration of highly dense memory solution; iv) the 2TnC cell structure also enables compute-in-memory (CIM) applications of FeRAM, which has not been widely explored. With this technology, storage and memory-centric computing can be enabled.