Theoretical Evaluation of Two-Dimensional Ferroelectric Material CuInP₂S₆for Ferroelectric Tunnel Junction Device

Ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) exploiting the switchable polarization of ferroelectric material holds great potential for the low-power non-volatile memory. Recently, two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectric material CuInP2S6 (CIPS) which can provide ferroelectricity at the ultimate atomic-scale has been successfully introduced in FTJ to achieve significantly improved TER. Here, we present a theoretical study on the performance of FTJ based on CIPS through the quantum transport simulation using kp Hamiltonian obtained from density functional theory. Benchmarking with ferroelectric HfZrO2-based FTJ reveals that much higher TER can be achieved in CIPS-based FTJ due to a lower tunneling potential barrier and a larger tunneling effective mass.