Sub-Nanosecond Switching of Si:HfO₂ Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistor

The discovery of ferroelectric doped HfO₂ enabled the emergence of scalable and CMOS-compatible ferroelectric field-effect transistor (FeFET) technology which has the potential to meet the growing need for fast, low-power, low-cost, and high-density nonvolatile memory, and neuromorphic devices. Although HfO₂ FeFETs have been widely studied in the past few years, their fundamental switching speed is yet to be explored. Importantly, the shortest polarization time demonstrated to date in HfO₂-based FeFET was ∼10 ns. Here, we report that a single subnanosecond pulse can fully switch HfO₂-based FeFET. We also study the polarization switching kinetics across 11 orders of magnitude in time (300 ps to 8 s) and find a remarkably steep time-voltage relation, which is captured by the classical nucleation theory across this wide range of pulse widths. These results demonstrate the high-speed capabilities of FeFETs and help better understand their fundamental polarization switching speed limits and switching kinetics.