Flexible, Temperature‐Stable, and Fatigue‐Endurable PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 Ferroelectric Film for Nonvolatile Memory

Flexible memory devices represent an emerging technological goal for information storage and data processing in portable, wearable, and smart electronics that work in curved conditions. This work presents a direct and cost-effective fabrication of a bendable PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 (PZT) ferroelectric memory element with a Pt bottom electrode layer and Au top electrodes on a flexible mica substrate. The polycrystalline PZT film with morphotropic phase boundary composition shows excellent electrical properties, reflected by superior ferroelectricity with a large remanent polarization (Pr ≈ 30 μC cm−2), good frequency stability (1-50 kHz), broad working temperature (25-200 °C), and excellent fatigue resistance (up to 109). Most importantly, with the assistance of the flexible mica substrate and the individual bendability of each film layer, the all-inorganic PZT ferroelectric film capacitor can be safely bent to a small bending radius of 2 mm with a bending strain of less than 0.3%, undergo repeated bending-releasing cycles for 103 times where no obvious deterioration occurs in polarization, and show data retention of 105 s, and fatigue resistance at 109 switching cycles. This work is anticipated to advance the application potential of high-performance flexible ferroelectric memories in next-generation wearable electronic devices.