Ferroelectric Negative Capacitance
Power dissipation in digital logic devices remains a major obstacle to the continuation of transistor scaling, which is at the heart of the computing revolution. The discovery of negative capacitance in ferroelectric materials offers a means to achieve passive voltage amplification to drastically reduce power consumption in field effect transistors (FETs). We are investigating the conditions under which negative capacitance can be stabilized, as well as the tradeoff between voltage gain and stability margin, particularly in industrially viable high-κ insulators. Recently we have developed a process which integrates a ferroelectric thin film into the gate stack of a high performance FET.