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While negative capacitance (NC) has been demonstrated in ferroelectric-dielectric (FE-DE) heterostructures in the form of capacitance enhancement, all experimental evidence, to date, suggests the existence of domains therein. Here, we address the question: what are the conditions to achieve ideal, domain-free NC in FE-DE heterostructures? Our main claim is that for given thicknesses of the ferroelectric and the dielectric layers, there is a critical value of domain wall energy parameter— above which the system would be stabilized in an ideal and robust domain-free NC state and would be robust against domain formation. Our analyses suggest that to achieve ideal NC, efforts should lie in understanding the means to control the domain wall energy on all fronts, both theory and experiments via high throughput design, discovery, and engineering of ferroelectrics. 

Doped HfO2 based ferroelectric FET (FeFET) exhibits a greatly improved retention performance compared with its perovskite counterpart due to its large coercive field, which prevents domain flip during retention. In this work, however, through extensive temperature dependent experimental characterization and modeling, we are demonstrating that: 1) with FeFET geometry scaling, the polarization states are no longer stable, but exhibit multi-step degradation and cause reduced sense margin in distinguishable adjacent levels or even eventual memory window collapse; 2) the instability is caused by the temperature activated accumulation of switching probability under depolarization field stress, which could cause domain switching within the retention time at operating temperatures. 

The continued miniaturization of nanoelectronic devices approaches its fundamental physical limits due to power dissipation. Negative capacitance field-effect transistors using ferroelectric gate insulators are promising to overcome these limits, which would allow further device scaling. However, the microscopic details of negative capacitance are not well understood so far, since mainly Landau based mean-field theories are used to model these phenomena. Here we use an educational and simplified approach to better understand the basic microscopic origin of ferroelectric negative capacitance. Our “toy” model shows that negative capacitance originates from the thermodynamic instability of the ferroelectric polarization and is bounded by the saturation of microscopic dipole polarizability. This shows that negative capacitance is strongly connected to the origin of ferroelectricity itself. Furthermore, our microscopic model results in the same qualitative behavior as mean-field Landau based approaches. 

We present a simple, physical explanation of underlying microscopic mechanisms that lead to the emergence of the negative phenomena in ferroelectric materials. The material presented herein is inspired by the pedagogical treatment of ferroelectricity by Feynman and Kittel. In a toy model consisting of a linear one-dimensional chain of polarizable units (i.e., atoms or unit cells of a crystal structure), we show how simple electrostatic interactions can create a microscopic, positive feedback action that leads to negative capacitance phenomena. We point out that the unstable negative capacitance effect has its origin in the so called “polarization catastrophe” phenomenon which is essential to explain displacement type ferroelectrics. Furthermore, the fact that even in the negative capacitance state, the individual dipole always aligns along the direction of the local electrical field not opposite is made clear through the toy model. Finally, how the “ S”-shaped polarization vs. applied electric field curve emerges out of the electrostatic interactions in an ordered set of polarizable units is shown.