A Ferroelectric and Charge Hybrid Nonvolatile Memory—Part II: Experimental Validation and Analysis

Part I of this article introduced the concept and operation of the novel hybrid memory, integrating ferroelectric polarization and nonvolatile charge injection. In Part II, we demonstrate the experimental validation of this hybrid design. One-transistor memory cells were fabricated with polyvinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene [P(VDF-TrFE)] as the ferroelectric and HfO₂ as the charge trap layer. Hybrid devices showed larger memory window and longer retention time compared to conventional FE-FETs with the same effective oxide thickness. Pulsed measurements were performed on metal-ferroelectric-metal capacitors to estimate switching delay in the P(VDF-TrFE) thin film. Field enhancement in the tunnel oxide resulted in pronounced electron injection from the gate compared with gate injection Flash memory cells. Hybrid devices also exhibited higher program efficiencies against the FE-FET due to the contribution from these injected electrons. The presence of the tunnel oxide in hybrid devices showed over 20× reduction in gate leakage, which resulted in 100 × improvement in cycling endurance against FE-FETs.