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HfO$_2$ is an important high-$\kappa$ dielectric and ferroelectric, exhibiting a complex potential energy landscape with several phases close in energy. It is, however, a strongly anharmonic solid, and thus describing its…
Hafnia (HfO2) is a promising material for emerging chip applications due to its high-k dielectric behaviour, suitability for negative capacitance heterostructures, scalable ferroelectricity, and silicon compatibility. The lattice dynamics…
Hafnia (HfO$_2$)-based thin films have promising applications in nanoscale electronic devices due to their robust ferroelectricity and integration with silicon. However, HfO$_2$ has various stable and metastable polymorphs with quite…
Since the first report of ferroelectricity in nanoscale HfO$_2$-based thin films in 2011, this silicon-compatible binary oxide has quickly garnered intense interest in academia and industry, and continues to do so. Despite its deceivingly…
Phonon-based approaches and molecular dynamics are widely established methods for gaining access to a temperature-dependent description of material properties. However, when a compound's phase space is vast, density-functional-theory-backed…
HfO$_2$-based ferroelectrics have emerged as promising materials for advanced nanoelectronics, with their robust polarization and silicon compatibility making them ideal for high-density, non-volatile memory applications. Oxygen vacancies,…
Understanding collective phenomena in quantum materials from first principles is a promising route toward engineering materials properties on demand and designing new functionalities. This work examines the quantum paraelectric state, an…
Ferroelectric memories experienced a revival in the last decade due to the discovery of ferroelectricity in HfO$_2$-based nanometer-thick thin films. These films exhibit exceptional silicon compatibility, overcoming the scaling and…
The metastable nature of the ferroelectric phase of HfO$_2$ is a significant impediment to its industrial application as a functional ferroelectric material. In fact, no polar phases exist in the bulk phase diagram of HfO$_2$, which shows a…
The metastable orthorhombic phase of hafnia is generally obtained in polycrystalline films, whereas in epitaxial films, its formation has been much less investigated. We have grown Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 films by pulsed laser deposition, and the…
Ferroelectricity in hafnia is often regarded as a breakthrough discovery in ferroelectrics, potentially able to revolutionize the whole field. Despite increasing interests, a comprehensive understanding of the many factors driving the…
Ferroelectric hafnia is being explored for next generation electronics due to its robust ferroelectricity in nanoscale samples and its compatibility with silicon. However, its ferroelectricity is not understood. Other ferroelectrics usually…
The question of whether one can systematically identify (previously unknown) ferroelectric phases of a given material is addressed, taking hafnia (HfO$_2$) as an example. Low free energy phases at various pressures and temperatures are…
The ferroelectricity in $\mathrm{HfO}_2$ thin films is widely attributed to the formation of a polar orthorhombic phase named OIII phase. However, the complexity of OIII phase originated from its low symmetry becomes an obstacle for…
The antipolar $Pbcn$ phase of HfO$_2$ has been suggested to play an important role in the phase transition and polarization switching mechanisms in ferroelectric hafnia. In this study, we perform a comprehensive benchmark of density…
We clarify the nature of hafnia as a proper ferroelectric and show that there is a shallow double well involving a single soft polar mode as in well-known classic ferroelectrics. Using symmetry analysis, density-functional theory (DFT)…
Ferroelectricity in the complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible hafnia (HfO$_2$) is crucial for the fabrication of high-integration nonvolatile memory devices. However, the capture of ferroelectricity in HfO$_2$ requires…
The discovery of ferroelectricity in HfO$_2$-based thin films opens up new opportunities for using this silicon-compatible ferroelectric to realize low-power logic circuits and high-density non-volatile memories. The functional performances…
Ferroelectric HfO2 is a promising candidate for next-generation memory devices due to its CMOS compatibility and ability to retain polarization at nanometer scales. However, the polar orthorhombic phase (Pca2_1) responsible for…
Structural softness - often characterized by unstable phonon modes and large electromechanical responses - is a hallmark of ferroelectric perovskites like BaTiO3 or Pb(Ti,Zr)O3. Whether HfO2 ferroelectrics present any such structural…