We are delighted to announce that recent work from our lab “Operational cycling voltage dependence of the oxygen vacancy distribution in 6nm Hf₀.₅Zr₀.₅O₂ ferroelectric capacitors” has been published in Applied Physics Letters.

This study investigates the influence of the operational cycling voltage on the oxygen-vacancy distribution in ultrathin HZO capacitors. Using synchrotron-based hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES), it explores the evolution of oxygen vacancies during electrical cycling and their role in the wake-up and fatigue behaviour of ferroelectric HZO.

We are thrilled to announce that our work on interface chemistry and oxygen-vacancy distribution in ferroelectric Hf₀.₅Zr₀.₅O₂ (HZO) FeFET stacks titled “X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy study of gate/ferroelectric interface chemistry in metal–ferroelectric–insulator–semiconductor stacks” has been published in the Journal of Applied Physics.

This article presents an XPS-based study of the evolution of the TiN/HZO interface during thermal processing, providing new insights into oxygen scavenging, interfacial defect formation, and their impact on the local electrostatic properties of the device.

Jayshree Dadheech from our laboratory recently attended the HarwellXPS Summer School 2026, held in Oxford, UK. The internationally attended summer school brought together researchers and delegates from across the world to explore the latest developments in X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) and related techniques. The programme featured a series of insightful lectures covering both the fundamentals and advanced applications of XPS. The sessions included the Fundamentals of XPS by Arthur Graff (HarwellXPS) and Dr. Elisabetta Arca (University of Liverpool), Practical data analysis using CasaXPS by Dr. Neal Fairley (Casa Software Ltd), Valence band and UPS analysis by Prof. Robert Palgrave (HarwellXPS, University College London), Hard X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (HAXPES) by Prof. Anna Regoutz (University of Oxford) along with several other expert lectures.

Eunjin Koh and Nick Barrett completed a hard X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) experiment at the BL09XU beamline of the SPring-8 synchrotron (Sayo, Japan). The beamtime was dedicated to investigating the effect of the HfO₂/ZrO₂ laminate interface on the oxygen vacancy concentration.

The IEEE Eastern Europe Ferroelectric Symposium 2026 took place in Riga, Latvia, from June 1–4, 2026, attracting over 100 scientists worldwide. Organised by the Institute of Solid State Physics, University of Latvia, and sponsored by the IEEE UFFC Society, the programme featured 5 plenary talks, 22 invited lectures, 40 oral presentations, and 34 posters covering experimental and theoretical ferroelectrics research, with growing emphasis on AI and machine learning for microscopy and rapid materials discovery.

LENSIS Lab (SPEC, CEA Saclay) was well represented By Dr. Somnath Kale presenting his work on multilevel polarization switching in ferroelectric hafnium thin films and devices within the Ferro4EdgeAI framework.

The Novel High-k workshop (https://www.namlab.com/high-k-workshop-2026-march-24-25th) was held from March 24^th to 26^th at NaMLab in Dresden, Germany. The 20^th anniversary of the discovery of ferroelectric doped HfO₂ was celebrated by 36 oral presentations, ranging from theoretical and experimental studies on ferroelectricity in HfO₂ to device applications of ferroelectric doped HfO₂.

‍This year over 14000 scientists came together for the APS Global Physics summit held in Denver, Colorado, USA from 15^th-19^th March 2026 (https://summit.aps.org/).

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Jayshree Dadheech, Lucía Pérez Ramírez and Akash Mhase (INL Lyon) recently conducted hard xray photoelectron spectroscopy (HAXPES) experiments on the GALAXIES  beamline at the SOLEIL synchrotron (Saint Aubin, France).

This beamtime was utilized to investigate the effect of Ta and TaOx interlayers on the interfacial chemistry of a reference stack TiN/Hf0.5Zr0.5O2/TiN and analyze their impact on the oxygen vacancy concentrations. Two batches with different Hf0.5Zr0.5O2 (HZO) thickness (6.7nm and 11.4nm) were investigated. These interlayer samples were fabricated using radio frequency sputtering by Akash Mhase, Sara Gonzalez at Institut des nanotechnologies de Lyon.

We recently completed a beamtime campaign at the UE49-PGM SPEEM beamline of BESSY II synchrotron in Berlin. The beamline is equipped with a photo-electron emission microscope (PEEM) devoted to element-selective and magnetic-sensitive space resolved investigations. In this beamtime, we exploited the facility’s capabilities of full polarization control of the incoming beam –delivering light of linear vertical or linear horizontal polarization– to perform X-ray Linear Dichroism (XLD) measurements on ferroelectric hafnium zirconium oxide devices. The x-ray absorption (XAS)-PEEM mode of the setup images the secondary electron emission at fixed kinetic energy, while the photon energy hν is scanned. The resulting spectra carry information on the local structure of the atoms and their shape can be related to the crystalline phase composition of HZO. XLD takes then advantage of the anisotropic absorption of linearly polarized X-ray radiation and provides an insight on the extent of polar distortion present in the ferroelectric layer in each direction (in-plane or out-of-plane).

The objective of this beamtime was to investigate the evolution of this polar distortion to corroborate the presence of a ferroelastic switch in HZO-based ferroelectric capacitors with different film thicknesses upon wake up. These experiments contribute to a broader effort to understand and engineer ferroelectric materials for next-generation memory devices.

We are thrilled to annouced that our work on electron trapping/detrapping in HZO has just been published in APL as featured/editor’s choice. This article dealt with expriments performed by W. Hamouda during his PhD work in the LENSIS. This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under Grant Agreement No. 780302 3 FERRO.

Read more : https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0288835

We are happy to welcome Jayshree Dadheech, our new PhD student in LENSIS.

I am Jayshree Dadheech from India. I have completed my Masters in Physics from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India. I have a strong passion for exploring new aspects of nature which has led me to CEA and France. I am beginning my Ph.D. thesis at LENSIS, SPEC, CEA on “Advanced characterization of ferroelectric domains in hafnia-based thin films.” The aim of this project is to explore various properties of hafnium oxide-based thin films in real time for potential applications in ferroelectric random-access memories (FeRAMs).  It will effectively utilize techniques like PFM, LEEM, PEEM and XPS to characterize and study the ferroelectric response in real time during the ferroelectric switching. I am looking forward to learn, connect and collaborate with colleagues here at CEA.

PhD funded by FerroFutures (https://www.pepr-electronique.fr/fer/).

Tom Iung, Thomas Cornélius (IM2NP), Lucía Pérez Ramírez, and Eun-Jin Koh recently conducted micro-X-ray diffraction (μ-XRD) experiments at the DIFFABS beamline of the SOLEIL synchrotron (Saint Aubin, France).

The main goal of this beamtime was to monitor in situ the crystallization (see picture) and phase evolution of a metal-ferroelectric (Si:HfO2)-insulator-semiconductor stack, which was fabricated in an industrial cleanroom at STMicroelectronics, Crolles. The annealing process, carried out between 450°C and 1000°C, aimed to assess the stack’s compatibility with both BeOL and FeOL processes. Additionally, the team evaluated potential phase transformations due to electric cycling for patterned stacks annealed at 750°C and 1000°C under industrial FeOL conditions.

This research is funded by the ANRT and the Ferro4EdgeAI (Grant agreement n° 101135656) project. The team expresses their gratitude to the Diffabs beamline scientist Cristian Mocuta for his support.

More than 1100 scientists took part in the 2025 edition of International Conference on Solid State Devices and Materials (https://ssdm.jp/) in Yokohama, Japan from 15^th-18^th September. Nearly 300 oral and 177 poster presentations covered a wide range of subjects from Flash memory, through design, photonics to wide band semiconductors and, of course, ferroelectrics for logic and memory technology. The latter attracted a record participation, with not less than 5 sessions dedicated to ferroelectrics.

Conference highlights included the plenary talk by Myeong-Jae Park (SK Hynix) on the pressing need for high bandwidth memory, not only for learning but also for mass parallel processing. Jun Okuno (Sony corporation) presented an overview of recent work on ferroelectric memories including FeRAMs, NV SRAMS and MFM invertors. Zhenhong Liu (Tokyo University) and Fei Yu (Xidian university) both emphasized the key role of charge trapping at oxygen vacancies in determining imprint and degradation. Takuya Maeda’s presentation on Recent Advances in ferroelectric ScAIN/GaN-based High Electron Mobility Transistors also attracted much interest.

Ferro4EdgeAI was well represented by S. Martin, L. Grenouillet, L. Perez Ramirez and N. Barrett with three presentations, two posters from CEA/Iramis on Cycling voltage dependence of the oxygen vacancy concentration profile in 6 nm HfxZr1-xO2 based ferroelectric capacitors and Oxygen vacancy mobility and charge de-trapping in ultra-thin HZO-based ferroelectric capacitors as a function of annealing temperature, one oral by S. Martin (CEA/Leti) on 22nm FDSOI 7 nm Hf_0.5Zr_0.5O₂ FeRAM Demonstration for Embedded Applications: from Ferroelectric Capacitors to FeRAM Arrays.

On their quest to elucidate the influence of the top electrode material on the oxygen vacancy distribution of ultrathin HfZrO2 FeCAPs, the LENSIS recently completed a beamtime campaign at MAXPEEM. The beamline, located at Max IV synchrotron (Lund, Sweden) is specialized Spectroscopic PhotoElectron and Low Energy Electron Microscope (SPELEEM).

Lucía Pérez Ramírez and Nicholas Barrett characterized several capacitors with different electrode materials (W or TiN), cycling (pristine, woken up, fatigued), and polarization states (up or down), to analyse the effect of material parameters on the vacancy distribution.

These results should complement the ones obtained during the Diffabs campaign (SOLEIL, https://www.ferro4edgeai.eu/news/micro-xrd-at-diffabs/soleil-fecap-phase-composition ) and contribute to building a comprehensive picture of the material characterization of HZO micro-structured FeCAPs.

This work supported by the ANR-DFG D3PO and Ferro4EdgeAI projects (https://www.ferro4edgeai.eu/). The team gratefully acknowledges the expert support of the beamline team: Evangelos Golias, Yuran Niu, and Weihua Lin.

Two Ferro4EdgeAI partners have announced a close collaboration to develop FMC’s Cache+ chiplet, a low power high density alternative to standard SRAMs using 1T-1C FeRAMs with HfZrO2.

https://www.ferroelectric-memory.com/fmc-and-cea%e2%80%91leti-join-forces-to-advance-feram-cache-memory-for-the-ai-era/

CACHE+ reimagines SRAM, the high-speed CACHE used throughout computing. It delivers ten times the density of conventional SRAM while reducing standby power by a factor of ten. It also adds persistence, and is designed to integrate seamlessly with next-generation chiplet architectures for ultra-high-performance AI inference systems. Together, these capabilities unlock new possibilities for system designers who are rethinking architectures from the ground up. Crucial for AI data centers which cannot continue consuming power at their current trajectory.

Welcome to Antoine Arnould, who has just begun a PhD thesis at LENSIS on the physics of AlBN/Ga₂O₃ and AlBN/GaN interfaces for power electronics in collaboration with AFRL (Dayton, OH, USA). He obtained his bachelor's and master's degrees in condensed matter physics at the University of Lorraine, Nancy.

Dr. Somnath Kale, a postdoctoral researcher from LENSIS, recently attended and presented at the IEEE South Asian Ferroelectric Symposium (SAFS 2025) held in Bengaluru, India. As the first edition of the conference, it marked an important milestone for the regional research community in ferroelectrics. Somnath presented a poster titled “Investigating Polarization Switching and Retention in Hf₀.₆Zr₀.₄O₂ Thin Films Using Piezoresponse Force and Photoemission Electron Microscopy.” During the event, he engaged in valuable discussions with our project partners, including Dr. Uwe Schroeder from NamLab and Dr. Jordan Bouaziz from EC Lyon. Prof. Andrei Kholkin showed strong interest in the PFM results, while Dr. Sujit Das from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was particularly enthusiastic about the PEEM-based findings.

This research is supported by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No. 101135656 (Ferro4EdgeAI).

Two members of our lab, Somnath-Dadabhau Kale and Eun Jin Koh, shared their latest work on “Investigating polarization switching and retention in Hf0.6Zr0.4O2 thin films using piezoresponse force and photoemission electron microscopy,” and Eun Jin Koh presented her work “Stoichiometry analysis of atomic layer deposition of ferroelectric Hf1-xZrxO2” at the International School of Oxide Electronics (CNRS) in Cargèse, France.

🔗 Read more: https://lnkd.in/eN6zA8QF

At the International Symposium on Applications of Ferroelectrics (ISAF 2025) in Graz, Austria, our laboratory was represented by PhD student Tom Iung, who delivered an oral presentation titled "Oxygen Vacancy Distribution and Phase Composition in Scaled Hf₀.₅Zr₀.₅O₂-Based Ferroelectric Capacitors." We want to acknowledge the ANR-DFG D3PO and Ferro4EdgeAI projects (https://www.ferro4edgeai.eu/) for the support as well as STMicroelectronics.

ISAF 2025 featured a strong lineup of talks on hafnia-based ferroelectrics. Strain and stress emerged as particularly trendy topics, highlighted by discussions on stoichiometry changes and their impact on material properties.