Endurance beyond 10 billion cycles in wurtzite ferroelectrics by confining nitrogen vacancies.

Wurtzite ferroelectrics could provide a route to wafer-scale integrated ferroelectric memories but are limited by endurance, typically failing at ~108 cycles. We identified nitrogen-vacancy (VN) clustering and long-range percolative migration as the defect-mediated pathways that drive leakage-current growth and dielectric breakdown. We combined a spatially engineered aluminum scandium nitride/aluminum nitride (AlScN/AlN) superlattice with a dynamic recovery protocol to spatially and energetically confine VN evolution that stabilized defect topology under cyclic electrical stress and suppressed hard breakdown and ferroelectric degradation. We demonstrated endurance beyond 1010 cycles in wurtzite ferroelectrics under a complete-switching criterion (remnant polarization ≥ 100 microcoulombs per square centimeter). These findings establish VN confinement as a scalable defect-topology framework that couples atomic-scale defect stability to reliable ultradense ferroelectric memories and provide guidance for next-generation nonvolatile memory technologies.