Multipeak Coercive Electric-Field-Based Multilevel Cell Nonvolatile Memory With Antiferroelectric-Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistors (FETs)

An ultralow program/erase voltage (
$\vert {V}_{\textit {P/E}}\vert = 4$
V) is demonstrated by using an antiferroelectric-ferroelectric field-effect transistor (AFE-FE-FET) through a multipeak coercive
${E}$
-field (
${E}_{C}$
) concept for a four-level stable state with outstanding endurance (>10
⁵
cycles) and data retention (>10
⁴
s at 65 °C). The mixture of ferroelectric (FE) and AFE domains can provide stable multistate and data storage with zero bias for multilevel cell (MLC) applications. HfZrO
₂
(HZO) with AFE-FE assembles an orthorhombic/tetragonal (o/t) phase composition and is achieved by [Zr] modulation in an HZO system. MLC characteristics not only improve high-density nonvolatile memory (NVM) but are also beneficial to neuromorphic device applications.