Lead-free epitaxial ferroelectric material integration on semiconducting (100) Nb-doped SrTiO3 for low-power non-volatile memory and efficient ultraviolet ray detection

Abstract We report lead-free ferroelectric based resistive switching non-volatile memory (NVM) devices with epitaxial (1-x)BaTiO 3 -xBiFeO 3 (x = 0.725) (BT-BFO) film integrated on semiconducting (100) Nb (0.7%) doped SrTiO 3 (Nb:STO) substrates. The piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) measurement at room temperature demonstrated ferroelectricity in the BT-BFO thin film. PFM results also reveal the repeatable polarization inversion by poling, manifesting its potential for read-write operation in NVM devices. The electroforming-free and ferroelectric polarization coupled electrical behaviour demonstrated excellent resistive switching with high retention time, cyclic endurance and low set/reset voltages. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy was utilized to determine the band alignment at the BT-BFO and Nb:STO heterojunction and it exhibited staggered band alignment. This heterojunction is found to behave as an efficient ultraviolet photo-detector with low rise and fall time. The architecture also demonstrates half-wave rectification under low and high input signal frequencies, where the output distortion is minimal. The results provide avenue for an electrical switch that can regulate the pixels in low or high frequency images. Combined this work paves the pathway towards designing future generation low-power ferroelectric based microelectronic devices by merging both electrical and photovoltaic properties of BT-BFO materials.