HfO₂-Based Ferroelectric Thin Films and Devices

Dear Colleagues,

Ferroelectric nanoscale materials have attracted substantial interest not only because of fundamental physical phenomena that are distinct from the bulk, including exotic topological domain configurations such as flux-closure domains, polar vortex, and polar skyrmions, but also due to their potential applications in reconfigurable ferroelectric memory devices. Notably, apart from the conventional perovskite-based ferroelectrics (e.g., BaTiO₃, (Pb,Zr)TiO₃), fluorite-structured HfO₂-based ferroelectrics are becoming a hot research topic due to their excellent compatibility with complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor technology (CMOS), robust ferroelectricity at the nanoscale, and scalability for highly dense information storage, which are promising for next-generation ferroelectric devices, such as ferroelectric random-access memories (FeRAMs), ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs), neuromorphic devices, and so on.

The present Special Issue of Nanomaterials aims to present the current state-of-the-art in the use of HfO₂-based ferroelectric thin films and devices, a field that has blossomed since 2011 with seminal discoveries of the first report of their ferroelectricity and recent advances in theoretical and experimental research, including the mechanism of stabilization of the metastable ferroelectric phase, wake-up effect, and ferroelectric fatigue, domains and domain dynamics, high-speed, high-reliability, high-density, and low-power ferroelectric memory devices, and so on. This Special Issue invites contributions from leading groups in the field, with the aim of providing a balanced view of the current state-of-the-art in this discipline.

The scope of this Special Issue is focused on ferroelectric nanoscale materials. Areas to be covered from the point of view of theoretical or experimental research may include, but are not limited to, the following:

(1) Fabrication and characterization of HfO₂-based ferroelectric nanoscale materials;

(2) Novel topological domains in perovskite-based ferroelectric nanoscale materials;

(3) Stabilization of metastable HfO₂-based ferroelectric phase;

(4) Mechanism of wake-up effect and fatigue (or endurance) in HfO₂-based thin films;

(5) Domain structures and domain dynamics in HfO₂-based thin films;

(6) Prototypical ferroelectric memory and novel logic devices.

Dr. Ren-Ci Peng
Prof. Dr. Shengchun Shen
Guest Editors

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• ferroelectric thin films
• novel topological domains
• HfO₂-based ferroelectric
• domain and domain dynamics
• wake-up effect and fatigue
• endurance
• metastable ferroelectric phase
• ferroelectric memory and logic devices