Project Grant 2149487

This $335,345 National Science Foundation Project Grant supports research to develop a scalable manufacturing process for phase-pure ferroelectric hafnium oxide and hafnium zirconium oxide through plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition. The University of Virginia will lead a multi-disciplinary, multi-national team in characterizing the impact of atomic layer deposition parameters on amorphous film structure and resulting material phases using advanced microscopy techniques. The research aims to determine how amorphous structure influences nucleation of crystalline phases to enable deterministic preparation of phase-pure materials. The project also evaluates nano- and device-scale ferroelectric behavior and the effect of phase impurities on material performance. This work under the NSF Engineering (CFDA 47.041) program will provide new knowledge on controlling crystallization of hafnium oxide-based materials through amorphous structure tuning to support development of low-power computing and memory technologies.