A Room-Temperature Ferroelectric Resonant Tunneling Diode

Zhijun Ma; Qi Zhang; Lingling Tao; Yihao Wang; Daniel Sando; Jinling Zhou; Yizhong Guo; Michael Lord; Peng Zhou; Yongqi Ruan; Zhiwei Wang; Alex Hamilton; Alexei Gruverman; Evgeny Y Tsymbal; Tianjin Zhang; Nagarajan Valanoor

doi:10.1002/adma.202205359

A Room-Temperature Ferroelectric Resonant Tunneling Diode

Adv Mater. 2022 Sep;34(35):e2205359. doi: 10.1002/adma.202205359. Epub 2022 Aug 2.

Authors

Zhijun Ma^{1

2}, Qi Zhang^{2

3}, Lingling Tao⁴, Yihao Wang¹, Daniel Sando^{2

3}, Jinling Zhou^{2

3}, Yizhong Guo⁵, Michael Lord^{2

3}, Peng Zhou¹, Yongqi Ruan¹, Zhiwei Wang¹, Alex Hamilton^{3

6}, Alexei Gruverman⁴, Evgeny Y Tsymbal⁴, Tianjin Zhang¹, Nagarajan Valanoor^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for the Synthesis and Application of Organic Functional Molecules, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for the Green Preparation and Application of Functional Materials, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, P. R. China.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia.
³ The Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Future Low Energy Electronics Technologies, UNSW, Sydney, 2052, Australia.
⁴ Department of Physics and Astronomy and Nebraska Center for Materials and Nanoscience, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE, 68588, USA.
⁵ Institute of Microstructure and Properties of Advanced Materials, Beijing University of Technology, Beijing, 100124, P. R. China.
⁶ School of Physics, University of New South Wales, Sydney, 2052, Australia.

PMID: 35801685
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202205359

Abstract

Resonant tunneling is a quantum-mechanical effect in which electron transport is controlled by the discrete energy levels within a quantum-well (QW) structure. A ferroelectric resonant tunneling diode (RTD) exploits the switchable electric polarization state of the QW barrier to tune the device resistance. Here, the discovery of robust room-temperature ferroelectric-modulated resonant tunneling and negative differential resistance (NDR) behaviors in all-perovskite-oxide BaTiO₃ /SrRuO₃ /BaTiO₃ QW structures is reported. The resonant current amplitude and voltage are tunable by the switchable polarization of the BaTiO₃ ferroelectric with the NDR ratio modulated by ≈3 orders of magnitude and an OFF/ON resistance ratio exceeding a factor of 2 × 10⁴ . The observed NDR effect is explained an energy bandgap between Ru-t_2g and Ru-e_g orbitals driven by electron-electron correlations, as follows from density functional theory calculations. This study paves the way for ferroelectric-based quantum-tunneling devices in future oxide electronics.

Keywords: ferroelectrics; negative differential resistance; quantum-well structures; resonant tunneling diodes.

Abstract

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