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March 19, 2026Nature Communications2 citationsOpen Access

Coupled polarization dynamics and charge tunneling enable reconfigurable heterojunctions

CLCe LiTYTianze YuZZZirui Zhang

Key Points

  • The aim is to create a ferroelectric heterostructure that combines polarization and tunneling for better memory performance.
  • Constructed a ferroelectric heterostructure using CuInP₂S₆.
  • Regulated ferroelectric polarization and charge tunneling simultaneously.
  • Evaluated memory operation metrics, including on/off ratio and endurance.
  • Achieved multimode regulation for different junction configurations.
  • On/off ratio exceeds 10^6, indicating strong memory performance.
  • Endurance measured at 10^5 cycles, signifying durability.
  • Stable retention of 16 distinct memory states for over 10^3 seconds.
  • Enhanced diode rectification ratio improves device efficiency.

Abstract

Layered CuInP₂S₆ provides robust ferroelectric polarization and strong local fields, enabling low-voltage, nonvolatile modulation, multilevel states, and analog weight updates for neuromorphic devices. However, devices driven solely by CuInP₂S₆ suffer from limited tunability and single-mechanism control inadequate for large-scale complementary logic and heterogeneous integration. In this work, we construct a ferroelectric heterostructure that simultaneously regulates ferroelectric polarization and charge tunneling, enabling nonvolatile memory operation with an on/off ratio exceeding 106, endurance up to 105 cycles, and stable retention of 16 distinct memory states for over 103 s. The distinct modulation effects of polarization and tunneling on channel transport enable controllably reconfigurable adjustment, yielding a high diode rectification ratio. By exploiting the difference between the coercive voltage and the tunneling threshold, multimode regulation of junction configurations (including nn, np, pp, and pn junctions) is realized. In addition, the device achieves logic-in-memory functionality within a single cell. Such a coupled polarization dynamics and tunneling effect enables the device to achieve high integration, energy efficiency, and multifunctionality, effectively reducing circuit complexity for next-generation intelligent computing, sensing, and edge applications.

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Cite This Study

Li et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/69bb9212496e729e6297f48chttps://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-70803-7
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