Abstract Ever since the ferroelectricity of complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) compatible HfO₂-based materials was discovered, numerous studies have been conducted on their ferroelectric (FE) properties and device applications. In particular, pure-HfO₂ FE materials without external doping have attracted considerable attention owing to their excellent robustness against variation because variations that appear in conventional doped-HfO₂ FEs are not observed in electrical characteristics induced by dopant fluctuations in pure-HfO₂ FEs. Studies on metal/FE/insulator/semiconductor (MFIS) stack are required to apply the ferroelectricity of pure-HfO₂ to memory devices that are completely compatible with Si-based CMOS processes. In pure-HfO₂ based MFIS stacks, the polarization tends to reduce with increasing thickness of the HfO₂, although the leakage current diminishes. To overcome the tradeoff between the polarization and leakage current with respect to the thickness of the HfO₂, an Al₂O₃ layer was inserted between the HfO₂ layers to form a laminated FE structure. By employing the laminated FE, leakage current was effectively suppressed by the Al₂O₃ and lower HfO₂ layers, and polarization was enhanced by the FE sum of the upper and lower HfO₂ layers. Therefore, an MFIS structure with maximized polarization and minimized leakage current was successfully demonstrated using laminated FE. In addition, the feasibility of the proposed MFIS with laminated FE for nonvolatile memory device applications was confirmed by verifying the multistate operations of a FE tunnel junction.