Tunneling Electroresistance in Ferroelectric Tunnel Junctions with a Composite Barrier

TL;DR

This paper predicts that ferroelectric tunnel junctions with a composite barrier can exhibit a giant tunneling electroresistance effect, significantly enhancing resistance change through polarization reversal, which could be useful for non-volatile memory devices.

Contribution

It introduces a novel composite barrier design in ferroelectric tunnel junctions that dramatically increases the tunneling electroresistance effect compared to traditional structures.

Findings

TER can be significantly enhanced with composite barriers.

Resistance can change by many orders of magnitude.

Electrostatic potential change drives the TER enhancement.

Abstract

Tunneling electroresistance (TER) effect is the change in the electrical resistance of a ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) associated with polarization reversal in the ferroelectric barrier layer. Here we predict that a FTJ with a composite barrier that combines a functional ferroelectric film and a thin layer of a non-polar dielectric can exhibit a significantly enhanced TER. Due to the change in the electrostatic potential with polarization reversal the non-polar dielectric barrier acts as a switch that changes its barrier height from a low to high value. The predicted values of TER are giant and indicate that the resistance of the FTJ can be changed by many orders in magnitude at the coercive electric field of ferroelectric.