Current rectifying and resistive switching in high density BiFeO(3) nanocapacitor arrays on Nb-SrTiO(3) substrates

Ultrahigh density well-registered oxide nanocapacitors are very essential for large scale integrated microelectronic devices. We report the fabrication of well-ordered multiferroic BiFeO(3) nanocapacitor arrays by a combination of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) method and anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) template method. The capacitor cells consist of BiFeO(3)/SrRuO(3) (BFO/SRO) heterostructural nanodots on conductive Nb-doped SrTiO(3) (Nb-STO) substrates with a lateral size of ~60 nm. These capacitors also show reversible polarization domain structures, and well-established piezoresponse hysteresis loops. Moreover, apparent current-rectification and resistive switching behaviors were identified in these nanocapacitor cells using conductive-AFM technique, which are attributed to the polarization modulated p-n junctions. These make it possible to utilize these nanocapacitors in high-density (>100 Gbit/inch(2)) nonvolatile memories and other oxide nanoelectronic devices.