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A study of the influence of tunnel oxide thickness on the performance of flash memory based on ion‐beam synthesized silicon nanocrystals
Author(s) -
Ng C. Y.,
Chen T. P.,
Du A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
physica status solidi (a)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.532
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1862-6319
pISSN - 1862-6300
DOI - 10.1002/pssa.200566103
Subject(s) - materials science , flash memory , oxide , annealing (glass) , nanocrystal , optoelectronics , silicon , silicon oxide , flash (photography) , threshold voltage , ion , non volatile memory , voltage , nanotechnology , electrical engineering , composite material , optics , transistor , metallurgy , chemistry , computer science , embedded system , silicon nitride , physics , organic chemistry , engineering
Abstract In this work, we have fabricated silicon nanocrystal (nc‐Si) based Flash memories with two different tunnel‐oxide thicknesses (3 and 7 nm). The nc‐Si is synthesized with very‐low energy ion implantation and subsequent thermal annealing. The endurance and retention characteristics of the memory devices are investigated. For the thick tunnel oxide (7 nm), a memory window of ∼0.5 V is achieved with the program/erase (P/E) operation at +12 V/–12 V for 1 ms; and for the thin tunnel oxide (3 nm), a memory window of ∼0.6 V can be obtained at +9 V/–9 V for 1 μs. For both oxide thicknesses, good endurance with a small threshold voltage drift after 10 5 P/E cycles is observed. For the thick and thin tunnel oxides, the device is expected to show ∼20% and ∼70% charge loss after 10 years, respectively. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)