CAREER: Non-volatile memory devices based on sliding ferroelectricity

This project will deliver a range of research and educational activities, such as memory research opportunities, outreach programs, and scientific lectures, targeting a broad range of groups from high school students and teachers to undergraduates. Next-generation memory technology is significant in addressing the escalating data capacity and energy demands of modern computing and data-driven applications such as the Internet of Things, smart manufacturing, and AI-empowered medical care. With the need for higher data densities, lower power consumption, faster access times, traditional memory solutions are reaching their limits. This project seeks to develop a new type of memory device—sliding ferroelectric tunnel junctions. It aims to harness the unique advantages of nonvolatile sliding ferroelectricity in atomically thin layered materials, which includes ultralow energy consumption, fast switching speed and ultracompact footprint. The resulting memory devices can enhance the performance capabilities essential for emergent technologies in artificial intelligence, big data analytics, and edge computing. A new type of ferroelectricity has been discovered in van der Waals materials, namely sliding ferroelectricity. The relative arrangement of atomic layers can break the mirror symmetry and inversion symmetry, leading to vertical spontaneous polarization. The ferroelectric switching between two opposite polarization is accomplished by relative lateral sliding between adjacent atomic layers with remarkably ultralow switching energy barriers and ultrafast switching time. Together with the advantage of the atomically clean surface of van der Waals materials for constructing robust ferroelectric tunneling junctions, such novel sliding ferroelectricity is promising for next-generation memory, logic and computational technologies. This CAREER proposal seeks to understand sliding ferroelectric orders, their role in ferroelectric tunneling junctions with an objective to realize memory devices with ultrafast operation speed, ultralow energy consumption and multistate functionalities. The project encompasses comprehensive studies including fundamental understanding of sliding ferroelectricity in response to various electrical and mechanical boundary conditions, ferroelectric tunneling junction device prototyping, benchmark, and metric optimization, and multistate device development. New techniques developed in this project will be integrated into undergraduate and graduate education to foster enthusiasm for STEM careers among the future generation. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.