On the go with SONOS

Advancements in scaling gate insulators for MOS transistors permit low-voltage, silicon-oxide-nitride-silicon (SONOS) nonvolatile semiconductor memories (NVSMs) for a wide range of applications. The continued scaling of SONOS devices offers improved performance with a small cell size, single-level polysilicon with low voltage, fast erase/write, improved memory retention, increased endurance, and radiation hardness. In this article, we discuss scaled SONOS devices, SONOS memory technology, and some SONOS NVSM applications