first direction and the other forms a series of lines in a direction at a right angle to the first direction although these lines are separated by the ferroelectric material they do cross over forming the grid of memory cells the region of ferroelectric material 16 sandwiched between the two lines at the crossover point shown in fig1 is the portion of the cell that holds the data value as will be discussed in more detail further fig2 shows a portion of a memory array formed of such cells the electrode line 20 from fig1 is defined as a word line and the electrode line 22 as the bit line the cell 10 is at the cross over point of these two lines and in this example is the active cell the active cell for the purposes here is that cell which is being addressed in a memory operation either a memory read or a memory write correspondingly the word line 20 is defined as the active word line awl and word line 22 is defined as the active bit line abl the word and bit lines surrounding the active cell are referred to as passive word lines pwl and passive bit lines pbl the data value in the cell is either a one u2018 1 u2019 or a zero u2018 0 u2019 the value of the cell is determined by the polarization of the material versus the voltage being applied referring now to fig3 a polarization.