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Nonvolatile memory design based on ferroelectric FETs

Published: 05 June 2016 Publication History

Abstract

Ferroelectric FETs (FEFETs) offer intriguing possibilities for the design of low power nonvolatile memories by virtue of their three-terminal structure coupled with the ability of the ferroelectric (FE) material to retain its polarization in the absence of an electric field. Utilizing the distinct features of FEFETs, we propose a 2-transistor (2T) FEFET-based nonvolatile memory with separate read and write paths. With proper co-design at the device, cell and array levels, the proposed design achieves non-destructive read and lower write power at iso-write speed compared to standard FERAM. In addition, the FEFET-based memory exhibits high distinguishability with six orders of magnitude difference in the read currents corresponding to the two states. Comparative analysis based on experimentally calibrated models shows significant improvement of access energy-delay. For example, at a fixed write time of 550ps, the write voltage and energy are 58.5% and 67.7% lower than FERAM, respectively. These benefits are achieved with 2.4 times the area overhead. Further exploration of the proposed FEFET memory in energy harvesting nonvolatile processors shows an average improvement of 27% in forward progress over FERAM.

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    cover image ACM Other conferences
    DAC '16: Proceedings of the 53rd Annual Design Automation Conference
    June 2016
    1048 pages
    ISBN:9781450342360
    DOI:10.1145/2897937
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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    Published: 05 June 2016

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    Author Tags

    1. NCFET
    2. ferroelectric FET (FEFET)
    3. hysteresis
    4. non-volatility
    5. nonvolatile memory (NVM)
    6. nonvolatile processor (NVP)

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    • (2025)Memristive Ferroelectric FET for 1T-1R Nonvolatile Memory With Non-Destructive ReadoutIEEE Open Journal of Nanotechnology10.1109/OJNANO.2025.35317596(27-34)Online publication date: 2025
    • (2025)Origin of charges in bulk SiMicroelectronic Engineering10.1016/j.mee.2024.112284296:COnline publication date: 11-Jan-2025
    • (2025)Design, simulation and comparative analysis of a novel NCFET based astable multivibrator and a current starved astable multivibratorAnalog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing10.1007/s10470-025-02347-7122:3Online publication date: 14-Feb-2025
    • (2024)Understanding memory window of ferroelectric field-effect transistor under coexistence of charge trapping and ferroelectric polarization: violation of linear superpositionJapanese Journal of Applied Physics10.35848/1347-4065/ad15e363:2(02SP47)Online publication date: 10-Jan-2024
    • (2024)A Survey of Emerging Memory in a Microcontroller UnitMicromachines10.3390/mi1504048815:4(488)Online publication date: 1-Apr-2024
    • (2024) Understanding the Memory Window of Ferroelectric FET and Demonstration of 4.8-V Memory Window With 20-nm HfO 2 IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices10.1109/TED.2024.341894271:8(4655-4663)Online publication date: Aug-2024
    • (2024)FeMPIM: A FeFET-Based Multifunctional Processing-in-Memory CellIEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs10.1109/TCSII.2023.333126771:4(2299-2303)Online publication date: Apr-2024
    • (2024)Branch Predictor Design for Energy Harvesting Powered Nonvolatile ProcessorsIEEE Transactions on Computers10.1109/TC.2023.333997773:3(722-734)Online publication date: Mar-2024
    • (2024)Compact Multiplexer Design with Multi-threshold Ferroelectric FETs2024 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI (ISVLSI)10.1109/ISVLSI61997.2024.00142(735-739)Online publication date: 1-Jul-2024
    • (2024)Transposable Memory Based on the Ferroelectric Field-Effect Transistor2024 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS)10.1109/ISCAS58744.2024.10558599(1-5)Online publication date: 19-May-2024
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