Electrical measurements of the high speed switching characteristics of micron-scale discrete ferroelectric capacitors

Abstract

A novel technique was employed to obtain electrical measurements of the high speed switching characteristics of small, discrete, SBT ferroelectric capacitors in response to applied pulses. Switching speed and polarization were directly measured as a function of applied amplitude, pulse width, rise time, and capacitor area. Two different ferroelectric film thicknesses were studied: 175 nm and 240 nm. Measurements were performed using off-wafer circuitry and applied pulses with rise times as fast as 2 ns and pulse widths as narrow as 10 ns on capacitors as small as 4 μm². A hysteresis loop was also obtained using a 20 MHz driving signal.

Key Words:

• switching current
• high speed
• high frequency
• pulse response
• write curves