A new technical paper titled “Thickness scaling down to 5 nm of ferroelectric ScAlN on CMOS compatible molybdenum grown by molecular beam epitaxy” was published by researchers at University of Michigan, with DARPA funding.
“Ferroelectric semiconductors stand out from others because they can sustain an electrical polarization, like the electric version of magnetism. But unlike a fridge magnet, they can switch which end is positive and which is negative. This property can be used in many ways—including sensing light and acoustic vibrations, as well as harvesting them for energy,” states this University of Michigan news article. The team used molecular beam epitaxy, controlled every layer of atoms in the ferroelectric semiconductor, and minimized losses of atoms from the surface to finally scale down to 5nm.
Find the open access technical paper here. Published January 2023.
Ding Wang, Ping Wang, Shubham Mondal, Mingtao Hu, Danhao Wang, Yuanpeng Wu, Tao Ma, and Zetian Mi , “Thickness scaling down to 5 nm of ferroelectric ScAlN on CMOS compatible molybdenum grown by molecular beam epitaxy”, Appl. Phys. Lett. 122, 052101 (2023) https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0136265.
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