Excellent Ferroelectricity and Thermal Stability in Ce-Doped HfO 2 Thin Films via Oxygen Vacancy Modulation
Source abstract
Abstract
This study introduces cerium (Ce) doping as a controllable strategy to regulate oxygen vacancy ( V O ) concentration and stabilize the metastable orthorhombic phase in HfO 2 thin films. Ce dopants, with low defect formation energy and high solubility, promote V O formation and reduce the free energy of the orthorhombic phase, enhancing its stability. Guided by first-principles calculations, chemical solution deposition was used to prepare Ce-doped HfO 2 thin films, enabling precise control over V O concentration and addressing the limitations of traditional post-treatment methods that struggle to control V O . The optimized Ce 0.2 Hf 0.8 O 2 film exhibits a high remanent polarization (2 P r ≈ 45 μC/cm 2 ), a low coercive field ( E c ≈ 1.08 MV/cm), an endurance lifetime surpassing 10 10 cycles, excellent retention (94.8%), and stable ferroelectricity up to 200 °C. These findings highlight the potential of Ce-doped HfO 2 for high-temperature nonvolatile memory (NVM) applications and provide a pathway for designing other high-performance HfO 2 -based systems.
Source: openalex_inverted_index · Quality: baseline
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Ferroelectric and Negative Capacitance Devices · Semiconductor materials and devices · Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
Affiliations
Frontier Institute of Science and Technology, State Key Laboratory for Mechanical Behavior of Materials, Interdisciplinary Research Center of Frontier Science and Technology
Xi’an Jiaotong University
School of Materials Science and Engineering
Xi’an University of Technology
State Key Laboratory of Materials Processing and Die and Mould Technology, School of Materials Science and Engineering
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Funding
China Postdoctoral Science Foundation · Natural Science Basic Research Program of Shaanxi Province · Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities · National Natural Science Foundation of China · Science and Technology Plan Project of Xi’an Beilin District of Shaanxi Province · Shaanxi Province Qin Chuangyuan “Scientists plus Engineers” Team Project
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