TY - GEN
T1 - Physics and technology of electronic insulator-to-metal transition (E-IMT) for record high on/off ratio and low voltage in device applications
AU - Lin, Jianqiang
AU - Alam, Khan
AU - Ocola, Leonidas
AU - Zhang, Zhen
AU - Datta, Suman
AU - Ramanathan, Shriram
AU - Guha, Supratik
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors acknowledge Prof. J. A. del Alamo in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for his technical support. This work was performed, in part, at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357. Aspects of the device work was supported jointly by the National Science Foundation under grant 1640081, and the Nanoelectronics Research Corporation (NERC), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), through Extremely Energy Efficient Collective Electronics (EXCEL), an SRC-NRI Nanoelectronics Research Initiative under Research Task ID 2698.001., and research grants ARO W911NF-16-1-0289, ONR N00014-16-1-2398.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 IEEE.
PY - 2018/1/23
Y1 - 2018/1/23
N2 - New device concepts related to both computing and biological function emulation are emerging rapidly based upon the electronic insulator-to-metal transition (E-IMT) effect that some oxides, such as VO2, exhibit. However, the experimental E-IMT devices to-date are limited to an ON/OFF ratio of ∼102, resulting in a small and inadequate dynamic range in device operation. In addition, the voltage that drives the E-IMT is high, typically above 1 V. In this paper, we investigate the physics and technology toward realizing both high ON/OFF and low-voltage E-IMT devices. We show that, the ON/OFF ratio, critical E-IMT voltage, and device reliability are closely coupled. A predictive model is developed and shows that, for reliable operation, the maximum ON/OFF ratio of an E-IMT device should follow a square-root relation with the strength of the thermally driven insulator-to-metal transition (T-IMT). This new design rule is verified by systematic experiments using prototypical VO2 E-IMT devices. Through this study, we achieve a record value of reliable E-IMT with an ON/OFF ratio of 3.5×103 at 1.2 V - greater than 10x improvement over the previous state-of-the-art. A record low voltage of IMT switching at 0.3 V (ON/OFF ratio = 20) is also demonstrated. The proposed universal design rule is widely applicable for a range of emerging applications based on E-IMT devices. As an experimental example, the E-IMT based transistors show an ultra-steep subthreshold swing (<1mV/dec) and ON/OFF ratio >103.
AB - New device concepts related to both computing and biological function emulation are emerging rapidly based upon the electronic insulator-to-metal transition (E-IMT) effect that some oxides, such as VO2, exhibit. However, the experimental E-IMT devices to-date are limited to an ON/OFF ratio of ∼102, resulting in a small and inadequate dynamic range in device operation. In addition, the voltage that drives the E-IMT is high, typically above 1 V. In this paper, we investigate the physics and technology toward realizing both high ON/OFF and low-voltage E-IMT devices. We show that, the ON/OFF ratio, critical E-IMT voltage, and device reliability are closely coupled. A predictive model is developed and shows that, for reliable operation, the maximum ON/OFF ratio of an E-IMT device should follow a square-root relation with the strength of the thermally driven insulator-to-metal transition (T-IMT). This new design rule is verified by systematic experiments using prototypical VO2 E-IMT devices. Through this study, we achieve a record value of reliable E-IMT with an ON/OFF ratio of 3.5×103 at 1.2 V - greater than 10x improvement over the previous state-of-the-art. A record low voltage of IMT switching at 0.3 V (ON/OFF ratio = 20) is also demonstrated. The proposed universal design rule is widely applicable for a range of emerging applications based on E-IMT devices. As an experimental example, the E-IMT based transistors show an ultra-steep subthreshold swing (<1mV/dec) and ON/OFF ratio >103.
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U2 - 10.1109/IEDM.2017.8268446
DO - 10.1109/IEDM.2017.8268446
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85045192051
T3 - Technical Digest - International Electron Devices Meeting, IEDM
SP - 23.4.1-23.4.4
BT - 2017 IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, IEDM 2017
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 63rd IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting, IEDM 2017
Y2 - 2 December 2017 through 6 December 2017
ER -