Wake-Up Free and Reliable ‘Ready-to-Go’ Ferroelectric Capacitors for High Temperature Memory-on-Logic Applications

We report, for the first time, wake-up-free and reliable operation at high temperatures in ultrathin ferroelectric (FE) capacitors deposited by plasma-enhanced ALD (PEALD), offering ready-to-go solutions for emerging 3D integrated systems and memory-on-logic architectures. Hafnium zirconium oxide (HZO) deposited through PE-ALD offers the advantage of low-temperature processing, but its reliability for elevated temperature operations remains unexplored. Our results show that: (1) PE-ALD HZO capacitors exhibit wake-up-free behavior with stable polarization (2Pr>40μC/cm2) even at 125° C, and (2) demonstrate superior endurance over thermal ALD (ThALD) counterparts across a wide temperature range (85−125∘C), making them suitable for high-temperature applications. The enhanced thermal reliability is driven by the lower effective activation energy (|Ea, eff|) of PE-ALD HZO, which mitigates endurance loss at high temperatures. These findings offer critical guidance for integrating ferroelectric memories into monolithic 3D architectures, where thermal challenges intensify with increased die stacking.