Direct Observations of Retention Failure in Ferroelectric Memories

Nonvolatile ferroelectric random-access memory uses ferroelectric thin films to save a polar state written by an electric field that is retained when the field is removed. After switching, the high energy of the domain walls separating regions of unlike polarization can drive backswitching resulting in a loss of switched domain volume, or in the case of very small domains, complete retention loss.

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