Polarization of Bi₂Se₃ thin film toward non-volatile memory applications

In recent years, topological insulators have drawn growing interest as a unique electronic state of matter toward quantum information technology. Despite the logic devices with magnetization switching through spin–orbit torque or the topological magneto-electric effect, realizing memory devices based on topological insulators has been urged in quantum computing applications. In this work, we report the design and fabrication of a non-volatile memory device that employs polarization of Bi2Se3 thin films achieving fast memory speed, sufficient memory window, and good reliability. The Bi2Se3 film polarizes under an external electrical field with charges accumulated on the top and bottom surfaces separating the electrons and holes. Such polarization is much faster than the carrier tunneling in conventional floating-gate flash memory and ferroelectric-based memory devices. In addition, good memory retention and endurance properties have also been obtained, showing great potential in high-performance memory application in future topological insulator-involved information technology.