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Updated: Sep 28, 2025
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A Fabrication and Measurement Method for a Flexible Ferroelectric Element Based on Van Der Waals Heteroepitaxy
Published on: April 8, 2018
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Giant tunnelling electroresistance through 2D sliding ferroelectric materials
Jie Yang1,2, Jun Zhou3, Jing Lu1,4,5,6
1State Key Laboratory for Mesoscopic Physics and School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China. jbyang@pku.edu.cn.
Materials Horizons
|March 28, 2022
Summary
Researchers developed van der Waals sliding ferroelectric tunnel junctions using staggered bilayer hexagonal boron nitride (BBN). Inserting 2D materials restored BBN ferroelectricity, achieving giant tunnelling electroresistance for advanced nano-memory applications.
Area of Science:
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Materials Science
- Nanotechnology
Background:
- Recent experimental discovery of ferroelectricity in staggered bilayer hexagonal boron nitride (BBN).
- Emergence of van der Waals (vdW) materials for novel electronic devices.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop and investigate vdW sliding ferroelectric tunnel junctions (FTJs) using BBN as an ultrathin barrier.
- To explore the transport properties influenced by ferroelectric states and metal contacts.
Main Methods:
- First-principles calculations to simulate transport properties of FTJs.
- Investigating the impact of electrode/BBN contact and inserted 2D materials.
Main Results:
- Electrode/BBN contact electric field was found to quench ferroelectricity, leading to low tunnelling electroresistance (TER).
- Insertion of high-mobility 2D materials between Au and BBN restored ferroelectricity, yielding a giant TER of ~10,000%.
- Metal-contact and thickness effects on tunnelling properties were analyzed.
Conclusions:
- Giant TER and multiple non-volatile resistance states observed in vdW sliding FTJs.
- Demonstrated potential for voltage-controlled nano-memories with ultrahigh storage density.
