1.2 Outline of the Thesis

This thesis starts with a brief description of the properties of ferroelectric materials in Chapter 2 and provides information on the physical properties involved. An overview of the modeling of these materials follows in Chapter 3, with special emphasis on hysteresis. This section concentrates on two different approaches, compact modeling and lattice modeling.

In Chapter 4 these models are analyzed with respect to TCAD requirements. Utilizing the results of this discussion, algorithms are introduced which allow the general two-dimensional simulation of hysteresis.

Chapter 5 concentrates on the frequency dependence of ferroelectric materials. A model is introduced which offers an excellent correspondence with measurements for one of the most popular ferroelectric materials, $\mathrm{PbZrTi0}_3$ (PZT).

The next chapter focuses on the details concerning the implementation of the models into MINIMOS-NT. This includes control concept, data flow and special analysis of the requirements of the models concerning numerics and discretization.

Chapter 7 contains an overview of the different designs of ferroelectric memory cells and their read and write operations.

In order to demonstrate the abilities of the introduced simulation tool, several simulation results are presented in the subsequent chapter. The examples provide an overview of possible applications of the simulation tool.

The thesis is concluded by an outlook on remaining challenges.