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High tunnelling electroresistance in a ferroelectric van der Waals heterojunction via giant barrier height modulation

Nature Electronics volume 3, pages 466–472 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

Ferroelectric tunnel junctions use a thin ferroelectric layer as a tunnelling barrier, the height of which can be modified by switching its ferroelectric polarization. The junctions can offer low power consumption, non-volatile switching and non-destructive readout, and thus are promising for the development of memory and computing applications. However, achieving a high tunnelling electroresistance (TER) in these devices remains challenging. Typical junctions, such as those based on barium titanate or hafnium dioxide, are limited by their small barrier height modulation of around 0.1 eV. Here, we report a ferroelectric tunnel junction that uses layered copper indium thiophosphate (CuInP2S6) as the ferroelectric barrier, and graphene and chromium as asymmetric contacts. The ferroelectric field effect in CuInP2S6 can induce a barrier height modulation of 1 eV in the junction, which results in a TER of above 107. This modulation, which is shown using Kelvin probe force microscopy and Raman spectroscopy, is due to the low density of states and small quantum capacitance near the Dirac point of the semi-metallic graphene.

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Fig. 1: The vdW FTJ device structure and the ferroelectric property of CIPS.
Fig. 2: Electrical characteristics of the vdW FTJ.
Fig. 3: Origin of the giant TER.
Fig. 4: Effect of the graphene semi-metallic contact on the vdW FTJ characteristics.
Fig. 5: Performance of the vdW FTJ as a memory device.

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Data availability

The data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

J.W., H.-Y.C. and H.W. acknowledge support from the Army Research Office Young Investigator Program (grant W911NF-18-1-0268) and the National Science Foundation (grant CCF-1618038). N.Y. and J.G. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation (grants 1618762, 1610387 and 1904580). J.C. and X.L. acknowledge support from the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC).

Author information

Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Jiangbin Wu, Hung-Yu Chen.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Jiangbin Wu, Hung-Yu Chen, Xiaodong Yan & Han Wang

  2. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, USA

    Ning Yang & Jing Guo

  3. Department of Chemistry, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Jun Cao & Xi Ling

  4. Collaborative Innovation Center for Information Technology in Biological and Medical Physics, and College of Science, Zhejiang University of Technology, Hangzhou, People’s Republic of China

    Fanxin Liu

  5. University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, People’s Republic of China

    Qibin Sun

  6. Division of Materials Science and Engineering, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA

    Xi Ling

  7. Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Material Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Han Wang

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Contributions

H.W. conceived the project and led the overall research activities. J.W. and H.-Y.C. fabricated the vdW FTJ devices. J.W., H.-Y.C. and X.Y. performed the electrical measurements and data analysis. N.Y. and J.G. led the research in the theoretical modelling. J.C. and X.L. synthesized the materials. J.W. and F.L. characterized the materials and devices. Q.S. contributed to the formulation of the project idea. J.W., H.-Y.C. and H.W. co-wrote the manuscript with input and comments from all the authors.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Qibin Sun, Jing Guo or Han Wang.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–10, Notes 1–3 and refs. 1 and 2.

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Wu, J., Chen, HY., Yang, N. et al. High tunnelling electroresistance in a ferroelectric van der Waals heterojunction via giant barrier height modulation. Nat Electron 3, 466–472 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-020-0441-9

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