Strain-Based Room-Temperature Non-Volatile MoTe\(_2\) Ferroelectric Phase Change Transistor

• Published in: arXiv.org
• Main Authors: Hou, Wenhui, Azizimanesh, Ahmad, Sewaket, Arfan, Peña, Tara, Watson, Carla, Liu, Ming, Askari, Hesam, Wu, Stephen M
• Format: Paper
• Language: English
• Published: Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 17.05.2019
• Subjects: Computation; Computer memory; Current leakage; Electric fields; Ferroelectric materials; Ferroelectricity; Field effect transistors; Landscape architecture; Phase transitions; Power consumption; Room temperature; Semiconductor devices; Switching; Thin films; Transistors; Transition metal compounds; Volatility
• ISSN: 2331-8422
• DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.1905.07423

The primary mechanism of operation of almost all transistors today relies on electric-field effect in a semiconducting channel to tune its conductivity from the conducting 'on'-state to a non-conducting 'off'-state. As transistors continue to scale down to increase computational performance, physical limitations from nanoscale field-effect operation begin to cause undesirable current leakage that is detrimental to the continued advancement of computing. Using a fundamentally different mechanism of operation, we show that through nanoscale strain engineering with thin films and ferroelectrics (FEs) the transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) MoTe\(_2\) can be reversibly switched with electric-field induced strain between the 1T'-MoTe\(_2\) (semimetallic) phase to a semiconducting MoTe\(_2\) phase in a field effect transistor geometry. This alternative mechanism for transistor switching sidesteps all the static and dynamic power consumption problems in conventional field-effect transistors (FETs). Using strain, we achieve large non-volatile changes in channel conductivity (G\(_{on}\)/G\(_{off}\)~10\(^7\) vs. G\(_{on}\)/G\(_{off}\)~0.04 in the control device) at room temperature. Ferroelectric devices offer the potential to reach sub-ns nonvolatile strain switching at the attojoule/bit level, having immediate applications in ultra-fast low-power non-volatile logic and memory while also transforming the landscape of computational architectures since conventional power, speed, and volatility considerations for microelectronics may no longer exist.