Perspective on ferroelectric, hafnium oxide based transistors for digital beyond von-Neumann computing

Ferroelectric hafnium oxide (HfO2) has been extensively studied for over a decade, especially as a CMOS-compatible material in emerging memory applications. Most recently, it has gained a lot of attention for being applied in the field of beyond von-Neumann computing. The specific nature of different nonvolatile storage elements, particularly ferroelectric capacitors (FeCaps), tunnel junctions (FTJs), and field-effect transistors (FeFETs), dictates the boundary conditions of their adoption in “beyond von-Neumann” circuits and applications. While, for example, the scaling limits restrict the minimum feature size of FeCaps and FTJs, FeFETs have been proven to be highly scalable. On the other hand, HfO2-based FeFETs exhibit a lower cycling endurance than FeCaps, which has strong implications on their integration into circuits establishing beyond von-Neumann computing. This perspective points out some of the challenges that HfO2-based FeFETs encounter in reality and how they might be overcome by a suitable tuning of the device. Likewise, it is demonstrated how a suitable choice of application can partially or completely mitigate the imposed challenges.

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