A New Read-Disturb Failure Mechanism Caused by Boosting Hot-Carrier Injection Effect in MLC NAND Flash Memory

Author

Wang, Hsin-Heng ; Shieh, Pei-Shan ; Huang, Chiu-Tsung ; Tokami, Kenji ; Kuo, Ricky ; Chen, Shin-Hsien ; Wei, Houng-Chi ; Pittikoun, Saysamone ; Aritome, Seiichi

Author_Institution

Powerchip Semicond. Corp., Hsinchu

fYear

2009

fDate

10-14 May 2009

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

In this paper, we have reported a new failure phenomenon of read-disturb in MLC NAND flash memory caused by boosting hot-carrier injection effect. (1) The read-disturb failure occurred on unselected WL (WLn+1) after the adjacent selected WL (WLn) was performed with more than 1K read cycles. (2) The read-disturb failure of WLn+1 depends on WLn cell´s Vth and its applied voltage. (3) The mechanism of this kind of failure can be explained by hot carrier injection that is generated by discharging from boosting voltage in unselected cell area (Drain of WLn) to ground (Source of WLn).

Keywords

NAND circuits; flash memories; hot carriers; multivalued logic circuits; MLC NAND flash memory; WLn cells Vth shift; hot-carrier injection boosting effect; read-disturb failure mechanism; unselected cell area; Analytical models; Boosting; Current density; Electrons; Electrostatic measurements; Failure analysis; Hot carrier injection; Impact ionization; Performance evaluation; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Memory Workshop, 2009. IMW '09. IEEE International

Conference_Location

Monterey, CA

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-3762-7

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IMW.2009.5090574

Filename

5090574