New fatigue model based on thermionic field emission mechanism

We investigated the mechanism of the fatigue phenomenon in ferroelectric th in films such as Pb(Zr, Ti)O-3 (PZT) and SrBi2Ta2O9 (SBT). The fatigue phen omenon in PZT was successfully explained by a new concept model introducing the effect of impact-ionization and energy distribution of trap levels to thermionic field emissions. This model can also explain the effect of appli ed voltage and temperature on the fatigue phenomenon. Moreover, we can simu late the fatigue characteristics in SBT by including the energy dissipation effect on the model for PZT. By introducing this result into an extrapolat ion method, the rewriting limit of ferroelectric thin films can be successf ully predicted.