Exploring the impact of domain numbers on negative capacitance effects in ferroelectric Device-Circuit Co-Design

This paper explores the performance of Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO)-stacked negative capacitance field-effect transistor (NCFET) for possible beyond complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. For the first time, we investigate the impact of ferroelectric (FE) domain numbers on the negative capacitance (NC) effect, energy dissipation, NC effect voltage window, polarization ramping rate, voltage amplification (A(NC)), and oscillation frequency of a 5-stage HZO-NCFET inverter-based ring oscillator (HZO-NCFET-RO). The results show that HZO-NCFET is suitable for low-voltage and high-speed applications, providing a significant increase in A(NC) concerning the conventional PZT-NCFET and P(VDF-TrFE)-NCFET. Our study suggests that the HZO intrinsic NC effect time scale is tiny and limited by the FE switching. We show that the switching time of HZO is similar to 20 times faster than the traditional FE [Pb(Nb0.04Zr0.28Ti0.68)O-3]. Finally, the proposed 5-stage HZO-NCFET-RO offers superior performance with a 26% higher oscillation frequency and a 94.42% reduction in power dissipation compared to standard 5-stage CMOS inverter-based RO. These findings highlight the potential of HZO-stacked NCFET as an alternative device for the future beyond-CMOS technology.