The tunneling electroresistance effect in a van der Waals ferroelectric tunnel junction based on a graphene/In2Se3/MoS2/graphene heterostructure.

In recent years, α-In2Se3 has attracted great attention in miniaturizing nonvolatile random memory devices because of its room temperature ferroelectricity and atomic thickness. In this work, we construct two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals (vdW) heterostructures α-In2Se3/MoS2 with different ferroelectric polarization and design a 2D graphene (Gr)/In2Se3/MoS2/Gr ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) with the symmetric electrodes. Our calculations show that the band alignment of the heterostructures can be changed from type-I to type-II accompanied by the reversal of the ferroelectric polarization of In2Se3. Furthermore, the ferroelectricity persists in Gr/In2Se3/MoS2/Gr vdW FTJs, and the presence of dielectric layer MoS2 in the FTJs enables the effective modulation of the tunneling barrier by altering the ferroelectric polarization of α-In2Se3, which results in two distinct conducting states denoted as "ON" and "OFF" with a large tunneling electroresistance (TER) ratio exceeding 105%. These findings suggest the importance of ferroelectric vdW heterostructures in the design of FTJs and propose a promising route for applying the 2D ferroelectric/semiconductor heterostructures with out-of-plane polarization in high-density ferroelectric memory devices.

Polarization-tunable interfacial properties in monolayer-MoS2 transistors integrated with ferroelectric BiAlO3(0001) polar surfaces.

With the explosion of data-centric applications, new in-memory computing technologies, based on nonvolatile memory devices, have become competitive due to their merged logic-memory functionalities. Herein, employing first-principles quantum transport simulation, we theoretically investigate for the first time the electronic and contact properties of two types of monolayer (ML)-MoS2 ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) integrated with ferroelectric BiAlO3(0001) (BAO(0001)) polar surfaces. Our study finds that the interfacial properties of the investigated partial FeFET devices are highly tunable by switching the electric polarization of the ferroelectric BAO(0001) dielectric. Specifically, the transition from quasi-Ohmic to the Schottky contact, as well as opposite contact polarity of respective n-type and p-type Schottky contact under two polarization states can be obtained, suggesting their superior performance metrics in terms of nonvolatile information storage. In addition, due to the feature of (quasi-)Ohmic contact in some polarization states, the explored FeFET devices, even when operating in the regular field-effect transistor (FET) mode, can be extremely significant in realizing a desirable low threshold voltage and interfacial contact resistance. In conjunction with the formed van der Waals (vdW) interfaces in ML-MoS2/ferroelectric systems with an interlayer, the proposed FeFETs are expected to provide excellent device performance with regard to cycling endurance and memory density.