Microstructural Evolution in Thin Films of Electronic Materials

Contains reports on eight research projects and a list of publications.National Science FoundationU.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific ResearchJoint Services Electronics Program Contract DAAL03-89-C-0001IBM CorporationHitachi CorporationSemiconductor Research CorporationNational Institutes of Healt

Microstructural Evolution in Thin Films of Electronic Materials

Contains reports on ten research projects.Joint Services Electronics Program Contract DAAL03-89-C-0001National Science FoundationU.S. Air Force - Office of Scientific Research Contract AFOSR 85-0154Semiconductor Research CorporationAT&TInternational Business Machines CorporationNational Institutes of Healt

Ferroelectricity of pristine Hf 0.5 Zr 0.5 O 2 films fabricated by atomic layer deposition

Abstract Hafnium-based ferroelectric films, remaining their ferroelectricity down to nanoscale thickness, present a promising application for low-power logic devices and nonvolatile memories. It has been appealing for researchers to reduce the required temperature to obtain the ferroelectric phase in hafnium-based ferroelectric films for applications such as flexible and wearable electronics. In this work, it demonstrates that a remanent polarization ( P r ) value of >5 μC/cm 2 can be obtained in as-deposited Hf 0.5 Zr 0.5 O 2 (HZO) films that are fabricated by thermal atomic layer deposition (TALD) under low temperature of 250 ℃. The ferroelectric orthorhombic phase (o-phase) in the as-deposited HZO films was detected by scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM). This low fabrication temperature further extends the compatibility of ferroelectric HZO films to flexible electronics and avoids the cost imposed by following high-temperature annealing treatments

Ultralow‐power in‐memory computing based on ferroelectric memcapacitor network

Abstract Analog storage through synaptic weights using conductance in resistive neuromorphic systems and devices inevitably generates harmful heat dissipation. This thermal issue not only limits the energy efficiency but also hampers the very‐large‐scale and highly complicated hardware integration as in the human brain. Here we demonstrate that the synaptic weights can be simulated by reconfigurable non‐volatile capacitances of a ferroelectric‐based memcapacitor with ultralow‐power consumption. The as‐designed metal/ferroelectric/metal/insulator/semiconductor memcapacitor shows distinct 3‐bit capacitance states controlled by the ferroelectric domain dynamics. These robust memcapacitive states exhibit uniform maintenance of more than 104 s and well endurance of 109 cycles. In a wired memcapacitor crossbar network hardware, analog vector‐matrix multiplication is successfully implemented to classify 9‐pixel images by collecting the sum of displacement currents (I = C × dV/dt) in each column, which intrinsically consumes zero energy in memcapacitors themselves. Our work sheds light on an ultralow‐power neural hardware based on ferroelectric memcapacitors

Aligning tourism's socio-economic impact with the United Nations' sustainable development goals

Socio-economic sustainability for tourism workers does not play a prominent role in contemporary tourism economic impact studies. Rather, to promote economic growth paradigms, the focus lies on aggregated employment and income effects. To better understand tourism's contribution to decent work and reduced inequalities (Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 10, respectively), our study assesses tourism's socio-economic impact by focussing on meso-level perspectives from major tourism institutions that are complemented with macro-level results gained through an occupation-based Input-Output model. Although income inequalities across tourism occupations remain relatively low, income inequalities over a period of nine years have increased. Tourism employees continue to work in precarious occupations due to limited training and career opportunities. Employers demand skilled vocational professions and provide non-monetary benefits; however, respective salaries remain average. Altogether, tourism contributes to Sustainable Development Goals 8 and 10 only moderately, and regional tourism institutions need to continue their development strategies for greater sustainability