A Comparative Study of Program/Erase Characteristic of Low-Voltage Low-Power NROM Using High-K Materials as Tunnel Dielectric

The program and erase injection current characteristics of NROM with SiO2, HfO2, LaAI03and AI2O3as tunnel dielectric respectively are studied in this paper. Due to the lower electron and hole energy barriers introduced by LaAIO3, both of the program and erase injection current density of NROM using LaAIO3as tunnel dielectric is improved dramatically. The injection efficiency is increased significantly, which indicates that introduction of LaAIO3can lower the operation voltage of NROM cells. We show that the bit line voltage can be reduced to 3V for both of program and erase operation of NROM cells with LaAIO3of 5nm and 8nm EOT. Our study also shows that the drain disturb is alleviated during programming and erasing NROM cell with LaAIO3tunnel dielectric due to the lower operating voltages(VBL=3V).