Silicon-nitride as a tunnel dielectric for improved SONOS-type flash memory

Author

She, Min ; Takeuchi, Hideki ; King, Tsu-Jae

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

24

Issue

5

fYear

2003

fDate

5/1/2003 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

309

Lastpage

311

Abstract

High-quality silicon-nitride (Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/) formed by rapid thermal nitridation is investigated as the tunnel dielectric in a SONOS-type memory device for the first time. Compared to a conventional thermal SiO/sub 2/ tunnel dielectric, thermal Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/ provides 100/spl times/ better retention after 1e5 P/E cycles and better endurance characteristics with low programming voltages. Hence, the SONNS structure is promising for nonvolatile memory applications.

Keywords

dielectric thin films; flash memories; nitridation; rapid thermal processing; semiconductor-insulator boundaries; silicon compounds; tunnelling; RTN; SONOS-type memory device; Si-SiO/sub 2/-Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/-SiO/sub 2/-Si; charge trap; endurance characteristics; flash memory; low programming voltages; nonvolatile memory applications; rapid thermal nitridation; retention; thermal Si/sub 3/N/sub 4/; tunnel dielectric; Charge carrier processes; Dielectric devices; Electron traps; Flash memory; Leakage current; Nonvolatile memory; SONOS devices; Silicon; Tunneling; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LED.2003.812547

Filename

1210835