2012/08/27 by Zheng Wen, Chen Li, Di Wu +3 · 4 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Memory and Neural Computing #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/nmat3649
17 pages, 3 figures. Supplemental information available upon request
arxiv created 2012/08/27 · openalex publication_date 2013/05/17 · arxiv updated 2013/05/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We propose a tunneling heterostructure by replacing one of the metal electrodes in a metal/ferroelectric/metal ferroelectric tunnel junction with a heavily doped semiconductor. In this metal/ferroelectric/semiconductor tunnel diode, both the height and the width of the tunneling barrier can be electrically modulated due to the ferroelectric field effect, leading to a colossal tunneling electroresistance. This idea is implemented in Pt/BaTiO3/Nb:SrTiO3 heterostructures, in which an ON/OFF conductance ratio above 104 can be readily achieved at room temperature. The colossal tunneling electroresistance, reliable switching reproducibility and long data retention observed in these ferroelectric tunnel diodes suggest their great potential in non-destructive readout nonvolatile memories.