Domain Formation in Ferroelectric Negative Capacitance Devices

The use of ferroelectric negative capacitance (NC) has been proposed as a promising way to reduce the power dissipation in nanoscale devices [1]. According to single-domain (SD) Landau theory, a hysteresis-free NC state in a ferroelectric might be stabilized in the presence of depolarization fields below a certain critical film thickness $t_{\mathrm{F, SD}}$. However, it is well-known that depolarization fields will cause the formation of domains in ferroelectrics to reduce the depolarization energy [2], which is rarely considered in the literature on NC [3]. The improvident use of SD Landau theory to model NC devices seems to be the main reason for the large discrepancy between experimental data and the current theory [4]. Here, we will show by simulation how anti-parallel domain formation can strongly limit the stability of the NC state in a metal-ferroelectric-insulator-metal (MFIM) structure, which is schematically shown in Fig. 1.