The effect of dimensional scaling on the erase characteristics of NOR flash memory

In this letter, new limitations on the NOR flash cell scaling have been presented. As cell scaling is continued, a parasitic capacitance between floating gate and bitline contact induces a large disturbance to the Fowler-Nordheim tunneling characteristics due to a coupling ratio variation, resulting in a much broader erase threshold distribution. Theoretical analysis including MEDICI simulations confirms the effects of parasitic capacitance on the erase threshold of NOR flash cells.